ling of comfort and
pleasure as he settled himself in his chair.

The lamp threw a dull illumination about the room. It was a picturesque
apartment, carefully planned. Not an object that had not been chosen
with care and the utmost discrimination. The walls had been treated
with copper leaf till they produced a sombre, iridescent effect of
green and faint gold, that suggested the depth of a forest glade shot
through with the sunset. Shelves bearing eighteenth-century books in
seal brown tree calf--Addison, the "Spectator," Junius and Racine,
Rochefoucauld and Pascal hung against it here and there. On every hand
the eye rested upon some small masterpiece of art or workmanship. Now
it was an antique portrait bust of the days of decadent Rome, black
marble with a bronze tiara; now a framed page of a fourteenth-century
version of "Li Quatres Filz d'Aymon," with an illuminated letter of
miraculous workmanship; or a Renaissance gonfalon of silk once white
but now brown with age, yet in the centre blazing with the escutcheon
and quarterings of a dead queen. Between the windows stood an ivory
statuette of the "Venus of the Heel," done in the days of the
magnificent Lorenzo. An original Cazin, and a chalk drawing by Baudry
hung against the wall close by together with a bronze tablet by Saint
Gaudens; while across the entire end of the room opposite the
fireplace, worked in the tapestry of the best period of the northern
French school, Halcyone, her arms already blossoming into wings,
hovered over the dead body of Ceyx, his long hair streaming like
seaweed in the blue waters of the AEgean.

For a long time Corthell sat motionless, looking into the fire. In an
adjoining room a clock chimed the half hour of one, and the artist
stirred, passing his long fingers across his eyes.

After a long while he rose, and going to the fireplace, leaned an arm
against the overhanging shelf, and resting his forehead against it,
remained in that position, looking down at the smouldering logs.

"She is unhappy," he murmured at length. "It is not difficult to see
that.... Unhappy and lonely. Oh, fool, fool to have left her when you
might have stayed! Oh, fool, fool, not to find the strength to leave
her now when you should not remain!"

The following evening Corthell called upon Mrs. Jadwin. She was alone,
as he usually found her. He had brought a book of poems with him, and
instead of passing the evening in the art gallery, as they had planned