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Doctor Lombard interrupted him with a snarl. “When he had done with it? Just so: I thank thee for that word! When it had been re-photographed, drawn, traced, autotyped, passed about from hand to hand, defiled by every ignorant eye in England, vulgarized by the blundering praise of every art-scribbler in Europe! Bah! I’d as soon give you the picture itself: why don’t you ask for that?”

“Well, sir,” said Wyant calmly, “if you will trust me with it, I’ll engage to take it safely to England and back, and to let no eye but Clyde’s see it while it is out of your keeping.”

The doctor received this remarkable proposal in silence; then he burst into a laugh.

“Upon my soul!” he said with sardonic good humor.

It was Miss Lombard’s turn to look perplexedly at Wyant. His last words and her father’s unexpected reply had evidently carried her beyond her depth.

“Well, sir, am I to take the picture?” Wyant smilingly pursued.

“No, young man; nor a photograph of it. Nor a sketch, either; mind that,–nothing that can be reproduced. Sybilla,” he cried with sudden passion, “swear to me that the picture shall never be reproduced! No photograph, no sketch–now or afterward. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, father,” said the girl quietly.

“The vandals,” he muttered, “the desecrators of beauty; if I thought it would ever get into their hands I’d burn it first, by God!” He turned to Wyant, speaking more quietly. “I said you might come back–I never retract what I say. But you must give me your word that no one but Clyde shall see the notes you make.”

Wyant was growing warm.

“If you won’t trust me with a photograph I wonder you trust me not to show my notes!” he exclaimed.

The doctor looked at him with a malicious smile.

“Humph!” he said; “would they be of much use to anybody?”

Wyant saw that he was losing ground and controlled his impatience.

“To Clyde, I hope, at any rate,” he answered, holding out his hand. The doctor shook it without a trace of resentment, and Wyant added: “When shall I come, sir?”

“To-morrow–to-morrow morning,” cried Miss Lombard, speaking suddenly.

She looked fixedly at her father, and he shrugged his shoulders.

“The picture is hers,” he said to Wyant.

In the ante-chamber the young man was met by the woman who had admitted him. She handed him his hat and stick, and turned to unbar the door. As the bolt slipped back he felt a touch on his arm.

“You have a letter?” she said in a low tone.

“A letter?” He stared. “What letter?”

She shrugged her shoulders, and drew back to let him pass.

II

As Wyant emerged from the house he paused once more to glance up at its scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically above the entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed into the passiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its hidden meaning. But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious thing about Doctor Lombard’s house. What were the relations between Miss Lombard and her father? Above all, between Miss Lombard and her picture? She did not look like a person capable of a disinterested passion for the arts; and there had been moments when it struck Wyant that she hated the picture.

The sky at the end of the street was flooded with turbulent yellow light, and the young man turned his steps toward the church of San Domenico, in the hope of catching the lingering brightness on Sodoma’s St. Catherine.

The great bare aisles were almost dark when he entered, and he had to grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary evocation of the sunset, the saint’s figure emerged pale and swooning from the dusk, and the warm light gave a sensual tinge to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed to glow and heave, the eyelids to tremble; Wyant stood fascinated by the accidental collaboration of light and color.