Poor Sibyl!  What a romance it had all been!  She had often mimicked death on the stage.  Then Death himself had touched her and taken her with him.  How had she played that dreadful last scene?  Had she cursed him, as she died?  No; she had died for love of him, and love would always be a sacrament to him now.  She had atoned for everything by the sacrifice she had made of her life.  He would not think any more of what she had made him go through, on that horrible night at the theatre.  When he thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the world’s stage to show the supreme reality of love.  A wonderful tragic figure?  Tears came to his eyes as he remembered her childlike look, and winsome fanciful ways, and shy tremulous grace.  He brushed them away hastily and looked again at the picture.

He felt that the time had really come for making his choice.  Or had his choice already been made?  Yes, life had decided that for him—­life, and his own infinite curiosity about life.  Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins—­he was to have all these things.  The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame:  that was all.

A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that was in store for the fair face on the canvas.  Once, in boyish mockery of Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips that now smiled so cruelly at him.  Morning after morning he had sat before the portrait wondering at its beauty, almost enamoured of it, as it seemed to him at times.  Was it to alter now with every mood to which he yielded?  Was it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to be hidden away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight that had so often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its hair?  The pity of it! the pity of it!

For a moment, he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy that existed between him and the picture might cease.  It had changed in answer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain unchanged.  And yet, who, that knew anything about life, would surrender the chance of remaining always young, however fantastic that chance might be, or with what fateful consequences it might be fraught?  Besides, was it really under his control?  Had it indeed been prayer that had produced the substitution?  Might there not be some curious scientific reason for it all?  If thought could exercise its influence upon a living organism, might not thought exercise an influence upon dead and inorganic things?  Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?  But the reason was of no importance.  He would never again tempt by a prayer any terrible power.  If the picture was to alter, it was to alter.  That was all.  Why inquire too closely into it?