“Florian—­you!  You—­Florian!” Then reeling, she threw up her arms and fell, face forwards on the floor, insensible.

He stood above her, dagger in hand,—­and studied the weapon with strange curiosity.  It was crimson and wet with blood.  Then he stared at the picture.  A faint horror began to creep over him.  The great Christ in the centre of the painting seemed to live and move, and float towards him on clouds of blinding glory.  His breath came and went in uneasy gasps.

“Angela!” he muttered thickly,—­“Angela!” She lay prone and horribly still.  He was afraid to touch her.  What had he done?  Murdered her?  Oh no!—­he had done nothing—­nothing at all,—­she had merely fainted—­she would be well presently!  He smiled foolishly at this, still gazing straight at the picture, and holding the sharp blood-stained blade in his hand.

“My love!” he said aloud,—­then listened—­as though waiting for an answer.  And still he stared persistently at the glorious figure of the Christ, till the Divine eyes seemed to flash the fire of an everlasting wrath upon his treacherous soul.

“To destroy the work?  Or claim it?” he mused, “Either would be easy!  That is, if she were dead!—.” he paused,—­amazed at his own thought.  “If she were dead, it would be easy to swear I had painted the picture!  If she were dead!” Again he listened.  “Angela!” he whispered.

A door banging in the house startled him from his semi-stupor.  His eyes wandered from the picture to the inanimate form lying at his feet.

“Sweet Angela!” he said, a cold smile flickering on his lips, “You were always unselfish!  You wished me to be the greatest artist of my time!—­and perhaps I shall be!—­now you are dead!  My love!”

A sudden clatter of horses’ hoofs and rolling wheels wakened hollow echoes from the great stone courtyard below.  It was the Cardinal returning from the Vatican.  A panic seized him—­his teeth chattered as with icy cold.  He sprang swiftly to the door by which Angela had admitted him, and opened it cautiously,—­then slinking out, locked it carefully behind him, took the key,—­and fled.  Once in the street, he never paused till he reached the corner of a dark projecting wall over-looking the Tiber, and here, glancing nervously round lest he should be observed, he flung his murderer’s dagger and the key of the studio both into the water.  Again he paused and listened—­looking up at the frowning windows of the Palazzo Sovrani which could be dimly seen from where he stood.  He had not meant to kill Angela.  Oh no!  He had come to the studio, full of love, prepared to chide her tenderly for the faults in her work,—­till he saw that it was faultless; to make a jest of her ambition,—­till he realized her triumph!  And then,—­then the devil had seized him—­ then—!  A scarlet slit in the western horizon showed where the sun had sunk,—­a soft and beautiful after-glow trembled over the sky in token