nconscious of the passing of time; a man in a maze of
absorption with his thoughts. Jack was strangely affected. His brain was
marking time at the double-quick of fruitless energy. He felt the
atmosphere of the room surcharged with the hostility of the unknown. He
was gathering a multitude of impressions which only contributed more
chaos to chaos. His sensibilities abnormally alive to every sound, he
heard the outside door opened with a latch-key; he heard steps in the
hall, and saw his father's figure in the doorway of the drawing-room.

John Wingfield, Sr. appeared with a smile that was gone in a flash.
His face went stark and gray as stone under a frown from the Doge to
Jack; and with an exclamation of the half-articulate "Oh!" of
confusion, he withdrew.

Jack looked around to see the Doge half turned in the direction of the
door, gripping the back of a chair to steady himself, while Mary was
regarding this sudden change in him in answer to the stricken change in
the intruder with some of Jack's own paralysis of wonder. The Doge was
the first to speak. He fairly rocked the chair as he jerked his hand free
of its support, while he shook with a palsy which was not that of fear,
for there was raging color in his cheeks. The physical power of his great
figure was revealed. For the first time Jack was able to think of him as
capable of towering militancy. His anger gradually yielded to the
pressure of will and the situation. At length he said faintly, with a
kind of abyssmal courtesy:

"Thank you, Sir Chaps! Now I shall not go back to the desert without
having seen a Velasquez. Thank you! And we must be going."

Jack had an impulse, worthy of the tempestuous buccaneer of the picture,
to call to his father to come down; and then to bar the front door until
his burning questions were heard. The still light in Mary's eyes would
have checked him, if not his own proper second thought and the fear of
precipitating an ungovernable crisis. There had been shadows, real
shadows, he was thinking wildly; they were not born of desert imaginings;
and out of the quandary of his anguish came only the desire not to part
from the Doge and Mary in this fashion! No, not until in some way
equilibrium of mind was restored.

Though he knew that they did not expect or want his company, he went
out into the street with them. He would go as far as their hotel, he
remarked, in the bravery of simulated ease. The three were walking in
the same r