that he would greet me with fierce
reproaches, as the cruelly officious patron who had turned his
contentment to bitterness, and I was relieved to find that my appearance
awakened no visible resentment. "Don't you know me?" I asked, as I put
out my hand. "Have you already forgotten me?"

He made no response, kept his position stupidly, and left me staring
about the room. It spoke most plaintively for itself. Shabby, sordid,
naked, it contained, beyond the wretched bed, but the scantiest provision
for personal comfort. It was bedroom at once and studio--a grim ghost of
a studio. A few dusty casts and prints on the walls, three or four old
canvases turned face inward, and a rusty-looking colour-box, formed, with
the easel at the window, the sum of its appurtenances. The place
savoured horribly of poverty. Its only wealth was the picture on the
easel, presumably the famous Madonna. Averted as this was from the door,
I was unable to see its face; but at last, sickened by the vacant misery
of the spot, I passed behind Theobald, eagerly and tenderly. I can
hardly say that I was surprised at what I found--a canvas that was a mere
dead blank, cracked and discoloured by time. This was his immortal work!
Though not surprised, I confess I was powerfully moved, and I think that
for five minutes I could not have trusted myself to speak. At last my
silent nearness affected him; he stirred and turned, and then rose and
looked at me with a slowly kindling eye. I murmured some kind
ineffective nothings about his being ill and needing advice and care, but
he seemed absorbed in the effort to recall distinctly what had last
passed between us. "You were right," he said, with a pitiful smile, "I
am a dawdler! I am a failure! I shall do nothing more in this world.
You opened my eyes; and, though the truth is bitter, I bear you no
grudge. Amen! I have been sitting here for a week, face to face with
the truth, with the past, with my weakness and poverty and nullity. I
shall never touch a brush! I believe I have neither eaten nor slept.
Look at that canvas!" he went on, as I relieved my emotion in an urgent
request that he would come home with me and dine. "That was to have
contained my masterpiece! Isn't it a promising foundation? The elements
of it are all _here_." And he tapped his forehead with that mystic
confidence which had marked the gesture before. "If I could only
transpose them into some brain that has the hand