said Torpenhow. 'You aren't at all well, though you
mayn't know it. You're as jumpy as a cat.'

'I reform to-morrow. Good-night.'

As he repassed through the studio, Torpenhow lifted the cloth above the
picture, and almost betrayed himself by outcries: 'Wiped out!--scraped
out and turped out! He's on the verge of jumps as it is. That's
Bess,--the little fiend! Only a woman could have done that!-with the ink
not dry on the check, too! Dick will be raving mad to-morrow. It was all
my fault for trying to help gutter-devils. Oh, my poor Dick, the Lord is
hitting you very hard!'

Dick could not sleep that night, partly for pure joy, and partly because
the well-known Catherine-wheels inside his eyes had given place to
crackling volcanoes of many-coloured fire. 'Spout away,' he said aloud.

'I've done my work, and now you can do what you please.' He lay still,
staring at the ceiling, the long-pent-up delirium of drink in his
veins, his brain on fire with racing thoughts that would not stay to be
considered, and his hands crisped and dry. He had just discovered that
he was painting the face of the Melancolia on a revolving dome ribbed
with millions of lights, and that all his wondrous thoughts stood
embodied hundreds of feet below his tiny swinging plank, shouting
together in his honour, when something cracked inside his temples like
an overstrained bowstring, the glittering dome broke inward, and he was
alone in the thick night.

'I'll go to sleep. The room's very dark. Let's light a lamp and see how
the Melancolia looks. There ought to have been a moon.'

It was then that Torpenhow heard his name called by a voice that he did
not know,--in the rattling accents of deadly fear.

'He's looked at the picture,' was his first thought, as he hurried
into the bedroom and found Dick sitting up and beating the air with his
hands.

'Torp! Torp! where are you? For pity's sake, come to me!'

'What's the matter?'

Dick clutched at his shoulder. 'Matter! I've been lying here for hours
in the dark, and you never heard me. Torp, old man, don't go away. I'm
all in the dark. In the dark, I tell you!'

Torpenhow held the candle within a foot of Dick's eyes, but there was no
light in those eyes. He lit the gas, and Dick heard the flame catch. The
grip of his fingers on Torpenhow's shoulder made Torpenhow wince.

'Don't leave me. You wouldn't leave me alone now, would you? I can't
see. D'you understand? It's black,--quite black,--an