etch here and there with his long brush, at
arm's length. "It is terrible," she added, in a lower tone.

"Truth is always terrible," answered Reanda. "But you cannot say that it
is not like her."

"Horribly like. It is diabolical!"

"And yet it is a beautiful head," said the artist. "Perhaps you are too
near." He himself crossed the hall, and then turned round to look at his
work. "It is better from here," he said. "Will you come?"

She went to his side. The huge face and wildly streaming hair stood out
as though in three dimensions from the wall. The great, strong mouth
smiled at her with a smile that was at once evil and sad and fatal. The
strange eyes looked her through and through from beneath the vast brow.

"It is diabolical, satanical!" she responded, under her breath.

Reanda still smiled wickedly and watched her. The face seemed to grow
and grow till it filled the whole range of vision. The dark eyes
flashed; the lips trembled; the flaming hair quivered and waved and
curled up like snakes that darted hither and thither. Yet it was
horribly like Gloria, and the fresh, rich oil colours gave it her
startling and vivid brilliancy.

It was the sudden and enormous expression of a man of genius, strung and
stung, till irritation had to find its explosion through the one art of
which he was absolute master--in a fearful caricature exaggerating
beauty itself to the bounds of the devilish.

"I cannot bear it!" cried Francesca.

She snatched the big brush from his hand, and, running lightly across
the room, dashed the colour left in it across the face in all
directions, over the eyes and the mouth, and through the long red hair.
In ten seconds nothing remained but confused daubs and splashes of
brilliant paint.

"There!" cried Francesca. "And I wish I had never seen it!"

Still holding the brush in her hand, she turned her back to the
obliterated sketch and faced Reanda, with a look of girlish defiance and
satisfaction. His face was grave now, but he seemed pleased with what he
had done.

"It makes no difference," he said. "You will never forget it."

He felt that he was revenged for the smile she had bestowed upon his
apparent surprise at Gloria's beauty, when she had followed the girl
into the hall, and had seen him start. He could not conceal his triumph.

"That is the young lady whom you thought I might wish to marry," he
said. "You know me little after so many years, Donna Francesca. You have
bestowe