so well--for a
faint, strange perfume always lingered about the studio, and gave to it
the subtle sense of life which certain perfumes can impart--his emotions
were gradually quickened to fury. He recalled the days of his intimacy
with the sculptor, of his unrestrained converse with Sydney. He recalled
his care for the invalid, persevered in, despite his passion, to the
end. And then his thought fastened upon the statue, which, strange to
say, he had almost forgotten.

The statue!

It must be there, with him, in the darkness, staring with those white
eyes in which he had seen a soul flicker.

As the recollection of it came to him, he trembled, leaning against the
wall.

He was in one of those states of acute mental tension in which the mind
becomes so easily the prey of the wildest fantasies, and slowly,
laboriously, he began to frame a connection between the lifeless marble
creature and his own dreary trouble.

Because of one moment of folly Sydney treated him as a pariah, as a
criminal. Her gentle nature had been transformed suddenly.

By what subtle influence?

Fane remembered the day of his first visit to Ilbury Road, and his
curious imagination that the statue recognised and hated him.

Had that hatred prompted action? Was there a devil lurking in the white,
cold marble to work his ruin? When Sydney sent him out of her presence
for ever, the watching face had seemed to smile.

Fane set his teeth in the darkness. He was no longer sane. He was
possessed. The tragedy of thought within him invited him to the
execution of another tragedy. He stretched out his hand with the
rehearsing action of one meditating a blow.

His hand fell upon an oak table that stood against the wall, and hit on
something smooth and cold. It was a long Oriental dagger that the dead
sculptor had brought from the East. Fane's fingers closed on it
mechanically. The frigid steel thrilled his hot palm, and a pulse in his
forehead started beating till there was a dull, senseless music in his
ears that irritated him.

He wanted to listen for the return of Sydney's carriage.

His soul was ablaze with defiance. He was alone in the darkness with his
enemy; the cold, deadly, blind, pulseless thing that yet was alive; the
silent thing that had yet whispered malign accusations of him to the
woman he loved; the nerveless thing that poisoned a beautiful mind
against him, that stole the music from his harp of life and let loose
the winds upon