ent owes his life to the nurse. When he recovered, his one
obsessing thought was that his life really belonged to her rather than
to himself. I have already said he was morbid half to the point of
madness. Genius is sometimes so!

"By no means a constant _absintheur_, in his moods he liked to watch
the opalescent gleams that flash in a glass of _Pernod_. One night,
when he had taken more perhaps than was his custom, he returned to his
lodgings, resolved to pay the debt, with an offer of marriage.

"I do not know how much was the morbidness of his own temperament, and
how much was the absinthe. I know that after that it was all wormwood
for them both.

"She was proud. She soon divined that he had asked her solely out of
sympathy, and perhaps it was at her urging that he left Paris alone.
Perhaps, it was because his fame was becoming too great to allow his
remaining there longer a recluse. At all events, he went away without
warning--fled precipitantly. No one was astonished. His friends only
laughed. For a year they laughed, then they became a trifle uneasy.
Finally, however, these fears abated. St. John, his father-in-law,
admitted that he was in constant correspondence with the master, and
knew where he was in hiding. He refused to divulge his secret of
place. He said that Marston exacted this promise--that he wanted to
hide. Then came new pictures, which St. John handled as his
son-in-law's agent. Paris delighted in them. Marston travels about
now, and paints. Whether he is mildly mad, or only as mad as his
exaggerated genius makes him, I have often wondered."

"What became of the poor girl?" Duska's voice put the question, very
tenderly.

"She, also, left Paris. Whether she let her love conquer her pride and
joined him, or whether she went elsewhere--also alone, no one knows
but St. John, and he does not encourage questions."

"I hope," said the girl slowly, "she went back, and made him love
her."

Herve caught the melting sympathy in Duska's eyes, and his own were
responsive.

"If she did," he said with conviction, "it must have made the master
happy. He gave her what he could. He did not withhold his heart from
stint, but because it was so written." He paused, then in a lighter
voice went on:

"And, speaking of Marston, one finds it impossible to refrain from
reciting an extraordinary adventure that has just befallen his first
disciple, Mr. Saxon, who is a countryman of yours."

The girl's eyes came s