and enrage it; how to fan, to burn, to lull,
to pierce, to slake, to inflame, to entice, to sting? Heavens! so well
they know--that their beauty must come, one thinks, out of hell itself!"

His great eyes gleamed like fire, his hollow chest panted for breath,
the sweat stood out on his temples. Cecil sought to soothe him, but his
words rushed on with the impetuous course of the passionate memories
that arose in him.

"Do you know what brought me here? No! As little as I know what brought
you, though we have been close comrades all these years. Well, it was
she! I was an artist. I had no money, I had few friends; but I had
youth, I had ambition, I had, I think, genius, till she killed it. I
loved my art with a great love, and I was happy. Even in Paris one
can be so happy without wealth, while one is young. The mirth of the
Barriere--the grotesques of the Halles--the wooden booths on New Year's
Day--the bright midnight crowds under the gaslights--the bursts of music
from the gay cafes--the gray little nuns flitting through the snow--the
Mardi Gras and the Old-World fooleries--the summer Sundays under the
leaves while we laughed like children--the silent dreams through the
length of the Louvre--dreams that went home with us and made our garret
bright with their visions--one was happy in them--happy, happy!"

His eyes were still fastened on the blank, white wall before him while
he spoke, as though the things that his words sketched so faintly were
painted in all their vivid colors on the dull, blank surface. And so in
truth they were, as remembrance pictured all the thousand perished hours
of his youth.

"Happy--until she looked at me," he pursued, while his voice flew in
feverish haste over the words. "Why would she not let me be? She
had them all in her golden nets: nobles, and princes, and poets, and
soldiers--she swept them in far and wide. She had her empire; why must
she seek out a man who had but his art and his youth, and steal those?
Women are so insatiate, look you; though they held all the world, they
would not rest if one mote in the air swam in sunshine, free of them! It
was the first year I touched triumph that I saw her. They began for the
first time to speak of me; it was the little painting of Cigarette, as
a child of the army, that did it. Ah, God! I thought myself already so
famous! Well, she sent for me to take her picture, and I went. I went
and I painted her as Cleopatra--by her wish. Ah! it was a