“No, Ned,—­you must not interrupt me to-night, neither you nor the rest,—­for I am very weak and nervous and ill, and just now need all my strength for my picture, which, as it has cost me labor and pain,—­much pain,—­I wish to show in its best light.  Macbeth’s terror—­it means more than it did the other night, Ned—­but”—­

Here he murmured an inarticulate word or two, recovering himself almost instantly, however, and resuming in a stronger voice,—­

“Macbeth’s doom is my picture.  You will wonder I preferred the solid wall to canvas, perhaps,—­but so did the genuine old artists.  Lippo Lippi, and Giotto, and—­why, Orcagna painted on graveyard walls; and I can almost fancy, sometimes, that this room is a vault, a tomb, a dungeon, where they torture people.  Turn to the place, good Mac, Shakespeare’s tragedy of ‘Macbeth,’ Act Third, Scene Fourth, and read the scene to us, as you know how to read; I will manage the accompaniments.”

As he spoke, he touched the salver with a lighted match, so that a blue alcoholic flame flickered up before the curtain, making the poor lad’s face seem more ghastly than ever.

“You must sit down, Clarian,” cried Dr. Thorne, resolutely.

Clarian smiled again, that dim, uncertain smile, and answered,—­

“Nay, Doctor, let me have my own way for an hour, and after that you shall govern me as your learned skill suggests.  And do not be uneasy about my ‘creamfaced’ aspect, as I see Ned is:  there is plentiful cause for it, beyond the feebleness of this very present, and to-night is not the first time I have worn these ‘linen cheeks.’  Read on, Mac.”

We sat there in the dim light, breathless, awed,—­for all of us saw the boy’s agony, and were the more shocked that we were unable to understand it,—­until, at last, in a voice made more impressive by its tremor, Mac began to read the terrible text,—­to read as I had never heard him read before, until a fair chill entered our veins and ran back to our shuddering hearts from sympathy.  Then, as he read on and painted the king and murderer together, while his voice waxed stronger and fuller, we saw Clarian step forward to the salver and busy with its lambent flame, till it blazed up with a broad, red light, that, shedding a weird splendor upon all around, and lending a supernatural effect to the room’s deep shadows, the picture’s funereal aspect, and the unearthly pallor of the boy’s countenance, startled our eyes like the painful glare of midnight lightning.

“Thou canst not say, I did it!  Never shake Thy gory locks at me!”