life. For he had likened the features of the Angel after Louise.

SPEAK, demon, he implored. Take on a woman's voice.

* * * * *

THE storm had ceased and the sun shone brightly on the wet grass and the
flowers of a day in June. One ray peeped in at the window of the studio
and saw the Angel broken by hammer and chisel on the floor. Its smiling
face seemed to forgive all the madness of the night.

FROM what strange nightmare was he awakening? At the sight of his loved
and hated Angel broken at his feet, his senses were slowly
returning--But with what pain they came--as if his head must break.

HE could not think yet--he would later on. He had been mad--he
remembered the doctor saying so--In France--shell shock.

* * * * *

IT had come over him as he stood by the gate of the Chateau. Then a
hospital. Afterward all had been darkness, a horrible groping amid a
thousand broken memories, phantoms which had shrouded him. But now it
was over. He was sane--life, life! Oh what joy to live again, as one
risen from the tomb--he would travel out into the world--far from his
studio.

THE attendant entered bringing lunch to the mad artist and found him
dead, his lips pressed to the marble ones of his Angel, the image of
Louise.

SHE was only one of his many phantoms.

OLD SCORES

A NIGHT of untold beauty.

COBWEBS on the heavens.

A GRAY winter sky, brightened by the moon shining through it.

BARE branches of hundreds of trees interlacing their silvery boughs.

AND a cottage with thatched roof and square leaded panes--a setting for
romance, for dreams of visionary splendor.

IS the master at home, asked a strange woman of the old man servant.

HE has not yet returned.

THEN I will wait for him.

AND despite the protests of the servant, Donna Maria entered the room.
It was a story and a half in height.

THERE was a huge fireplace, and everywhere, without arrangement, in the
happy disorder of a studio, were canvases and palettes.

ANOTHER setting for romance.

BUT romance--at least for tonight--has not found its way to the studio
in the woods.

* * * * *

THERE was perhaps some intuition, some forewarning of disaster in the
mind of Robert Hale. He walked abstractedly, untouched by the beauty of
the night.

HE was deep in the inner experience of the conception of a new picture.

HE entered his house.