He shook his head slowly.  “No, no; you misunderstand me.  Your Aunt Victoria is quite irreproachable, she always has been, she always will be.  She is always in the right.  She always will be.  She did nothing to me but hire me to teach her stepson, and when my habits became too bad, discharge me, as any one would have done.  She did nothing to Arnold except to leave him to the best schools and the best tutors money could buy.  What more could any one have done?  She had not the slightest idea that Horace Gilbert would try to poison his wife, had not the slightest connection with their quarrel.  The young poet,—­Adams was his name, now I remember—­did not consult her before he took to cocaine.  Morphine is my own specialty.  Victoria of course deplored it as much as any one could.  No, I’m not for a minute intimating that Victoria is a Messalina.  We’d all be better off if she were.  It’s only our grossness that finds fault with her.  Your aunt is one of the most respectable women who ever lived, as ’chaste as unsunned snow—­the very ice of chastity is in her!’ Indeed, I’ve often wondered if the redoubtable Ephraim Smith himself, for all that he succeeded in marrying her, fared any better than the rest of us.  Victoria would be quite capable of cheating him out of his pay.  She parches, yes, she dries up the blood—­but it’s not by her passion, not even by ours.  Honest passion never kills.  It’s the Sahara sands of her egotism into which we’ve all emptied our veins.”

Sylvia was frozen to the spot by her outraged indignation that any one should dare speak to her thus.  She found herself facing a fresco of a tall, austere figure in an enveloping white garment, an elderly woman with a thin, worn, noble face, who laid one fine old hand on a stone parapet and with divine compassion and tenderness looked out over a sleeping city.  The man followed the direction of her eyes.  “It’s Puvis de Chavannes’ Ste. Genevieve as an old woman, guarding and praying for the city.  Very good, isn’t it?  I especially admire the suggestion of the plain bare cell she has stepped out from.  I often come here to look at it when I’ve nothing to eat.”  He seemed as flaccidly willing to speak on this as on any other topic; to find it no more interesting than the subject of his former speech.

Sylvia was overcome with horror of him.  She walked rapidly away, towards the door, hoping he would not follow her.  He did not.  When she glanced back fearfully over her shoulder, she saw him still standing there, looking up at the gaunt gray figure of beneficent old age.  His dreadful broken felt hat was in his hand, the water dripped from his frayed trousers over the rotting leather of his shoes.  As she looked, he began to cough, loudly, terribly, so that the echoing reaches of the great nave resounded to the sound.  Sylvia ran back to him and thrust her purse into his hand.  At first he could not speak, for coughing, but in a moment he found breath to ask, “Is it Victoria’s money?”