“Oh, please, you must not!” she said.

“Go on, tell me all,” he urged, but still held the miniature in his hand for a moment.

“There is little more to tell.  He played a part.  She came to know how coarse and brutal he was, how utterly depraved.

“At last he went away to Africa—­that was three years ago.  Word came that he was drowned off the coast of Madagascar, but there is nothing sure, and the woman would not believe that he was dead unless she saw him so or some one she could trust had seen him buried.  Yet people call her a widow—­who wears no mourning” (she smiled bitterly) “nor can until”—­

Hagar came to his feet.  “You have trusted me,” he said, “and I will honor your confidence.  To the world the story I tell on this canvas shall be my own.”

“I like to try and believe,” she said, “that there are good men in the world.  But I have not done so these many years.  Who would think that of me?—­I who sing merry songs, and have danced and am gay—­how well we wear the mask, some of us!”

“I am sure,” he said, “that there are better days coming for you.  On my soul I think it.”

“But he is here,” she said.  “What for?  I cannot think there will be anything but misery when he crosses my path.”

“That duel,” he rejoined, the instinct of fairness natural to an honorable man roused in him; “did you ever hear more than one side of it?”

“No; yet sometimes I have thought there might be more than one side.  Fairfax Detlor was a coward; and whatever that other was,”—­she nodded to the picture—­“he feared no man.”

“A minute!” he said “Let me make a sketch of it.”

He got to work immediately.  After the first strong outlines she rose, came to him and said, “You know as much of it as I do—­I will not stay any longer.”

He caught her fingers in his and held them for an instant.  “It is brutal of me.  I did not stop to think what all this might cost you.”

“If you paint a notable picture and gain honor by it, that is enough,” she said.  “It may make you famous.”  She smiled a little wistfully.  “You are very ambitious.  You needed, you said to me once, a simple but powerful subject which you could paint in with some one’s life’ blood—­that sounds more dreadful than it is * * * well? * * * You said you had been successful, but had never had an inspiration”—­

“I have one!”

She shook her head.  “Never an inspiration which had possessed you as you ought to be to move the public * * * well? * * * do you think I have helped you at all?  I wanted so much to do something for you.”

To Hagar’s mind there came the remembrance of the pure woman who, to help an artist, as poverty stricken as he was talented, engaged on the “Capture of Cassandra,” came into his presence as Lady Godiva passed through the streets of Coventry, as hushed and as solemn.  A sob shook in his throat—­he was of few but strong emotions; he reached out, took her wrists in his hands, and held them hard.  “I have my inspiration now,” he said; “I know that I can paint my one great picture.  I shall owe all to you.  And for my gratitude, it seems little to say that I love you—­I love you, Marion.”