ashed upon me. The Metropolitan Museum, in New York,
held a portrait by a famous French artist of that incendiary beauty
whose name it now appeared cloaked the identity of Desire Michell,
daughter and sister of New England clergymen. I had seen the portrait.
And piled in an intricate magnificence of curls, puffs and coils about
the haughty little head of the lady, was her gold-bronze hair; the color
of the braid upstairs in my chiffonier drawer.

I went up to my room and opened the work of Master Abimelech
Fetherstone. Yes, there was likeness between the poor, coarse woodcut
and the French portrait. The long, dark eyes with their expression of
blended drowsiness and watchfulness were too individual to have escaped
either record. Moreover, both pictures resembled that face of ivory and
dusk I had glimpsed in the ray of the electric torch, all clouded and
surrounded by swirls of gray vapor shot with gold.

Who and what was the girl Desire Michell whom I had come to love through
a more profound darkness than that of the sight?

It seemed wisest to keep busy for the rest of the afternoon. I sorted my
music. There was the score of a musical comedy so nearly completed that
it could be sent to those who waited for it. Vere would attend to that,
if tonight made it necessary. I reflected with disappointment that the
first rehearsals would begin in a couple of weeks, and I had looked
forward to this production with especial interest. There was the
symphony, still unfinished, that I had hoped might be more enduring than
popular music. If I was to be less enduring than either, we must go
glimmering on our ways. If I snatched Desire out of her path into mine,
she and I would see all those things together.

I finished at last, and set my room in order. There was a fire laid
ready for lighting in my hearth, a mere artistic flourish in such
weather. I kindled it, and put in the flames three of the volumes from
the ancient bookcase. The others were oddities in occult science. Those
three were vile and poisonous. No doubt other copies exist, but at least
I refused to be guilty of leaving these to wreak their mischief in
Phillida's household. They burned quietly enough, and meekly fell to
ashes under my poker.

Our round dinner-table was cheerful as usual, with yellow-shaded candles
flanking a bowl of yellow and scarlet nasturtiums. But I found its
mistress suffering from a nervous headache.

"It is only the fog," she answered our s