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Miss Lombard laid her hand on his arm.

“Don’t excite yourself, father,” she said in the detached tone of a professional nurse.

He answered with a despairing gesture. “Ah, it’s easy for you to talk. You have years and years to spend with it; I am an old man, and every moment counts!”

“It’s bad for you,” she repeated with gentle obstinacy.

The doctor’s sacred fury had in fact burnt itself out. He dropped into a seat with dull eyes and slackening lips, and his daughter drew the curtain across the picture.

Wyant turned away reluctantly. He felt that his opportunity was slipping from him, yet he dared not refer to Clyde’s wish for a photograph. He now understood the meaning of the laugh with which Doctor Lombard had given him leave to carry away all the details he could remember. The picture was so dazzling, so unexpected, so crossed with elusive and contradictory suggestions, that the most alert observer, when placed suddenly before it, must lose his coordinating faculty in a sense of confused wonder. Yet how valuable to Clyde the record of such a work would be! In some ways it seemed to be the summing up of the master’s thought, the key to his enigmatic philosophy.

The doctor had risen and was walking slowly toward the door. His daughter unlocked it, and Wyant followed them back in silence to the room in which they had left Mrs. Lombard. That lady was no longer there, and he could think of no excuse for lingering.

He thanked the doctor, and turned to Miss Lombard, who stood in the middle of the room as though awaiting farther orders.

“It is very good of you,” he said, “to allow one even a glimpse of such a treasure.”

She looked at him with her odd directness. “You will come again?” she said quickly; and turning to her father she added: “You know what Professor Clyde asked. This gentleman cannot give him any account of the picture without seeing it again.”

Doctor Lombard glanced at her vaguely; he was still like a person in a trance.

“Eh?” he said, rousing himself with an effort.

“I said, father, that Mr. Wyant must see the picture again if he is to tell Professor Clyde about it,” Miss Lombard repeated with extraordinary precision of tone.

Wyant was silent. He had the puzzled sense that his wishes were being divined and gratified for reasons with which he was in no way connected.

“Well, well,” the doctor muttered, “I don’t say no–I don’t say no. I know what Clyde wants–I don’t refuse to help him.” He turned to Wyant. “You may come again–you may make notes,” he added with a sudden effort. “Jot down what occurs to you. I’m willing to concede that.”

Wyant again caught the girl’s eye, but its emphatic message perplexed him.

“You’re very good,” he said tentatively, “but the fact is the picture is so mysterious–so full of complicated detail–that I’m afraid no notes I could make would serve Clyde’s purpose as well as–as a photograph, say. If you would allow me–“

Miss Lombard’s brow darkened, and her father raised his head furiously.

“A photograph? A photograph, did you say? Good God, man, not ten people have been allowed to set foot in that room! A PHOTOGRAPH?”

Wyant saw his mistake, but saw also that he had gone too far to retreat.

“I know, sir, from what Clyde has told me, that you object to having any reproduction of the picture published; but he hoped you might let me take a photograph for his personal use–not to be reproduced in his book, but simply to give him something to work by. I should take the photograph myself, and the negative would of course be yours. If you wished it, only one impression would be struck off, and that one Clyde could return to you when he had done with it.”