walked in his tunic, with bare throat and bare knees, and carried the
toga over one bare arm, and swung the other bare arm free. He walked
with head held high, for he was seeing visions, and hearing a
far-distant call. Now at last he might choose his path. He had not
failed, but with that call from afar--what should he do? Should he
answer it? Was it only a call from out his own heart--a passing,
futile call, luring him back?

Of one thing he was sure. There was the painting on which he had
labored and staked his all now hanging in the Salon. He could see it,
one of his visions realized,--David and Saul. The deep, rich
shadows, the throne, the tiger skin, the sandaled feet of the
remorseful king resting on the great fanged and leering head, the
eyes of the king looking hungrily out from under his forbidding brows,
the cruel lips pressed tightly together, and the lithe, thin hands
grasping the carved arms of the throne in fierce restraint,--all
this in the deep shadows between the majestic carved columns, their
bases concealed by the rich carpet covering the dais and their tops
lost in the brooding darkness above--the lowering darkness of purple
gloom that only served to reveal the sinister outlines of the somber,
sorrowful, suffering king, while he indulged the one pure passion
left him--listening--gazing from the shadows out into the light,
seeing nothing, only listening.

And before him, standing in the one ray of light, clothed only in his
tunic of white and his sandals, a human jewel of radiant color and
slender strength, a godlike conception of youth and grace, his harp
before him, the lilies crushed under his feet that he had torn from
the strings which his fingers touched caressingly, with sunlight in
his crown of golden, curling hair and the light of the stars in his
eyes--David, the strong, the simple, the trusting, the God-fearing
youth, as Robert Kater saw him, looking back through the ages.

Ah, now he could live. Now he could create--work: he had been
recognized, and rewarded--Dust and ashes! Dust and ashes! The hope of
his life realized, the goblet raised to his lips, and the draft--bitter.
The call falling upon his heart--imperative--beseeching--what did it
mean?

Slowly and heavily he mounted the stairs to his studio, and there
fumbled about in the darkness and the confusion left by his admiring
comrades until he found candles and made a light. He was cold, and his
light clothing clung to him wet an