ionate resentment.
I longed to forget I was held by a tie, that known to the world would
cause me the bitterest shame. For by this time the true character of
her father and brother had been revealed and I found myself bound to the
daughter of a convicted criminal.

"But I could not forget her. The look with which she had left me was
branded into my consciousness. Night and day it floated before me, till
to escape it I resolved to fasten it upon canvas, if by that means I
might succeed in eliminating it from my dreams.

"The painting you have seen this night is the result. Born with an
artist's touch and insight that under other circumstances might,
perhaps, have raised me into the cold dry atmosphere of fame, the
execution of this piece of work, presented but few difficulties to my
somewhat accustomed hand. Day by day her beauty grew beneath my brush,
startling me often with its spiritual force and significance till my
mind grew feverish over its work, and I could scarcely refrain from
rising at night to give a touch here or there to the floating golden
hair or the piercing, tender eyes turned, ah, ever turned upon the
inmost citadel of my heart with that look that slew my father before his
time and made me, yes me, old in spirit even in the ardent years of my
first manhood.

"At last it was finished and she stood before me life-like and real in
the very garments and with almost the very aspect of that never to be
forgotten moment. Even the roses which in the secret uneasiness of my
conscience I had put in her hand on our departure from Troy, as a sort
of visible token that I regarded her as my bride, and which through all
her interview with my father she had never dropped, blossomed before
me on the canvas. Nothing that could give reality to the likeness,
was lacking; the vision of my dreams stood embodied in my sight, and I
looked for peace. Alas, that picture now became my dream.

"Inserting it behind that of Evelyn which for two years had held its
place above my armchair, I turned its face to the wall when I rose in
the morning. But at night it beamed ever upon me, becoming as the months
passed, the one thing to hold to and muse over when the world grew a
little noisy in my ears and the never ceasing conflict of the ages beat
a trifle too loudly on heart and brain.

"Meanwhile no word of her, only of her villainous father and brother; no
token that she had escaped evil or was removed from want. If I had loved