all that warmth with a few apparently kind words.  For he had never thought it possible that she,—­a mere woman,—­could evolve from her own brain and hand, such a poetic, spiritual and magnificent conception as “The Coming of Christ.”  And when he saw what she had done, he bitterly envied her her power,—­he realized the weakness of his own efforts as compared with her victorious achievement, and he hated her accordingly, as all men hate the woman who is intellectually superior to themselves.  After all, there was no way out of it, but the way he had chosen,—­to kill her and make an end!  To kill her and make an end!  He muttered these words over and over to himself, as he stood irresolutely watching the broad patterns of the moonlight, and thinking confusedly about the time.  Yes,—­it was four o’clock when he went to Angela’s studio,—­it must have been five, or past that hour when he left it,—­when he slunk down the side-street which led to the river, and threw the key and his dagger together into the muddy tide.  After that he had gone home,—­and had superintended his valet, while that individual packed his portmanteau for Naples—­and then—­and then?  Yes,—­then he had written to Angela,—­one of the pretty gracious little notes she was accustomed to receive from him,—­how strange it was to write to a dead girl!—­and he had gone out to the nearest florist’s shop, and chosen a basket of lilies to send to her,—­lilies were for dead maidens always,—­and he had sent the flowers and his love letter together.  Then surely it must have been about half-past six?  He tried to fix the hour, but could not, and again his thoughts went rambling on.  After sending the lilies, he had returned to his own house, and Pon-Pon had prepared a “petit cafe” for him, and he had partaken of it, and had smoked a couple of cigarettes with her, and then had said a leisurely good-bye, and had started for the railway-station en route for Naples.  What train had he intended to go by?  The eight o’clock express.  He remembered that.  But on the way, he had discovered that loss of the dagger-sheath,—­ an unforeseen fatality that had turned him back, and brought him to where he now stood meditating.  How long did the driver of that fiacre he hired, take to bring him to the wayside inn on the road to Frascati?  This he could not determine,—­but to his uncertain memory it seemed to have been an unusually tedious and tiresome journey.  And now—­here he was—­with no habitation in sight save the solitary building whose walls loomed darkly through the eucalyptus trees.  He went towards it after a while, walking slowly and almost mechanically;—­he was extremely tired, and an oppressive sense of heat and weariness combined made him anxious to obtain a night’s lodging somewhere,—­no matter in what sort of place.  Anything would be better than sleeping out on the Campagna, an easy prey to the worst form of fever.  As he approached more nearly to the house among the trees, he saw that it was surrounded by a very high, closely intertwisted