She looked at him and saw how pale he was, how his lips trembled, and the consciousness that he was unhappy moved her to a faint sense of compunction.

“Of course you may!” she answered gently.  “I know you do not hate me.”

“Hate you!” Cyrillon paused, his eyes softening with a great tenderness as they rested upon her.  “Who could hate you?”

“Florian hated me,” she said.  “Not always,—­no!  He loved me once!  Only when he saw my picture, then his love perished.  Ah, my Florian!  Had I known, I would have destroyed all my work rather than have given him a moment’s pain!”

“And would that have been right?” asked Cyrillon earnestly.  “Would not such an act have been one of selfishness rather than sacrifice?”

A faint color crept over her pale cheeks.

“Selfishness?—­”

“Yes!  Your love for him was quite a personal matter,—­but your work is a message to the world.  You would have sacrificed the world for his sake, even though he had murdered you!”

“I would!” she answered, and her eyes shone like stars as she spoke.  “The world is nothing to me; love was everything!”

“That is your way of argument,” said Cyrillon.  “But it is not God’s way!”

She was silent, but her looks questioned him.

“Genius like yours,” he went on, “is not given to you for yourself alone.  You cannot tamper with it, or play with it, for the sake of securing a little more temporal happiness or peace for yourself.  Genius is a crown of thorns,—­not a wreath of flowers to be worn at a feast of pleasure!  You wished your life to be one of love,—­God has chosen to make it one of suffering.  You say the world is nothing to you,—­then my dear friend, God insists that it shall be something to you!  Have you the right—­I ask you, have you the right to turn away from all your fellow mortals and say—­’No—­because I have been disappointed in my hope and my love, then I will have nothing to do with life—­I will turn away from all who need my help—­I will throw back the gifts of God with scorn to the Giver, and do nothing simply because I have lost what I myself specially valued!’”

Her eyes fell beneath his straight clear regard, and she moved restlessly.

“Ah you do not know—­you do not understand!” she said.  “I am not thinking of myself—­indeed I am not!  But I feel as if my work—­my picture—­had killed Florian!  I hate myself!—­I hate everything I have ever done, or could ever possibly do.  I see him night and day in those horrible flames!—­Oh God! those cruel flames!—­he seems to reproach me,—­even to curse me for his death!”

She shuddered and turned her face away.  Cyrillon ventured to take her hand.