depicted.

"And the fellow who painted her!--the man with the barbarous name! Bah!
he was big--as big as our Mr. Andrews--and ugly--pooh! uglier than he!
A moon-face, with cropped skull like a prize-fighter and no soul. But,
yes, he could paint. 'A Dream at Dawn' was genius--yes, some soul he
must have had.

"He could paint, dear friends, but he could not love. Him I counted
as--puff!"

He blew imaginary down into space.

"Her I sought out, and presently found. She told me, in those sweet
stolen rambles along the shore, when the moonlight made her look like a
Madonna, that she was his inspiration--his art--his life. And she wept;
she wept, and I kissed her tears away.

"To please her I waited until 'A Dream at Dawn' was finished. With the
finish of the picture, finished also his dream of dawn--the moon-faced
one's."

Tcheriapin laughed, and lighted a fresh cigarette.

"Can you believe that a man could be so stupid? He never knew of
my existence, this big, red booby. He never knew that I existed
until--until his 'dream' had fled--with me! In a week we were in Paris,
that dream-girl and I--in a month we had quarrelled. I always end these
matters with a quarrel; it makes the complete finish. She struck me in
the face--and I laughed. She turned and went away. We were tired of one
another.

"Ah!" Again he airily kissed his hand. "There were others after I had
gone. I heard for a time. But her memory is like a rose, fresh and fair
and sweet. I am glad I can remember her so, and not as she afterward
became. That is the art of love. She killed herself with absinthe, my
friends. She died in Marseilles in the first year of the great war."

Thus far Tcheriapin had proceeded, and was in the act of airily flicking
ash upon the floor, when, uttering a sound which I can only describe as
a roar, Andrews hurled himself upon the smiling violinist.

His great red hands clutching Tcheriapin's throat, the insane Scotsman,
for insane he was at that moment, forced the other back upon the settee
from which he had half arisen. In vain I sought to drag him away from
the writhing body, but I doubt that any man could have relaxed that
deadly grip. Tcheriapin's eyes protruded hideously and his tongue lolled
forth from his mouth. One could hear the breath whistling through his
nostrils as Andrews silently, deliberately, squeezed the life out of
him.

It all occupied only a few minutes, and then Andrews, slowly opening his
rigidly cro