with his queer, magnetic eyes.

An oath broke from Roger.

"You'll have the original, you see, Trenby," explained Rooke urbanely,
glancing towards him.

Then he turned again to Nan.

"Have I, Nan?"

She opened her lips to reply, but no words came. She stood there
silently, her eyes wide and terror-stricken, her cheeks stained with
the tears that dripped down them unheeded.

Roger's glance swept her as though there were something distasteful to
him in the sight of her and she flinched under it, moaning a little.

"Well," he said to Rooke. "Is the picture mine--or yours?"

"Mine," answered Rooke.

Roger made a single stride towards the easel. Then his hand shot out,
and the next moment there was a grinding sound of ripping and tearing
as, with the big blade of his clasp-knife, he slashed and rent and
hacked at the picture until it was a wreck of split and riven canvas.

With a cry like that of a wounded animal Rooke leaped forward to gave
it, but Roger hurled him aside as though he were a child, and once more
the knife bit its way remorselessly through paint and canvas.

There was something indescribably horrible in this deliberate,
merciless destruction of the exquisite work of art. Nan, watching the
keen blade sweep again and again across the painted figure of the
portrait, felt as though the blows were being rained upon her actual
body. Distraught with the violence and horror of the scene she tried
to scream, but her voice failed her, and with a hoarse, half-strangled
cry she covered her eyes, rocking to and fro. But the raucous sound of
rending canvas still grated hideously against her ears.

Suddenly Roger ceased to cut and slash at the portrait. Seizing it in
both hands, he dragged it from the easel and flung it on the floor at
Rooke's feet.

"There's your picture!" he said. "Take it--and hang it in your
'admirable light'!" And he strode out of the room.

A long silence fell between the two who were left. Then Rooke, who was
staring at the ruin of his work with his mouth twisted, into an odd,
cynical smile, murmured beneath his breath:

"_Sic transit_ . . ."

Once more the silence wrapped them round. Wan-faced and with staring
eyes, Nan drew near the heap of mangled canvas.

At last:

"I can't bear it! I can't bear it!" she whispered, and a shuddering
sob shook her slight frame from head to foot. "Oh, Maryon--"

She stretched her hands towards him gropingly, like a child that i