an hour earlier! Such furore did not often occur at the Comique. All
recollection of Patel's mediocre work was wiped away in the swelter and
glow of this passionate music, more modern than Wagner, more brutal
than Richard Strauss. "Who would have believed that the old dried-up
mummy had such a volcano in his brain?"--this the bereaved woman had
overheard as she descended the marble stairway of the theatre, and
Chardon hurried her to the carriage fearing that the emotions of the
evening--the souvenirs of the dead, the shouting of the audience and the
blaring of the band as it had saluted her trembling, bowing figure in
the box--finally would prove too strong for her. He, too, had come in
for some of the applause, a sort of inverted glory which like a frosty
nimbus envelopes the head of the librettist. Now he recalled all this
and rejoiced that his charge was safely within doors.

Madame Patel retained only one servant in her dignified, miniature
household, for she was not rich; but the lamps were burning brightly,
and on the table stood cold food, wine and fruit. The music-room was
familiar to her late husband's associate. Patel's portrait hung over the
fireplace. It represented in hard, shallow tones the face of a
white-haired, white-bearded man whose thin lips, narrow nose and high
forehead proclaimed him an ascetic of art. The deep-set eyes alone told
of talent--their gaze inscrutable and calculating; a disappointed life
could be read in every seam of the brow.

Near the piano, where Chardon turned as he waited Madame Patel's return
from her dressing-room, there swung a picture whose violence was not
dissipated by the gloom of the half-hidden corner. He approached it with
a lamp. Staring eyes saluted him, eyes saturated with the immitigable
horror of life; eyes set in grotesque faces and smothered in a sinister
Northern landscape. It was one of Edvard Munch's ferocious and ironic
travesties of existence. And on the white margin of the lithograph the
artist had pencilled: "I stopped and leaned against the balustrade
almost dead with fatigue. Over the blue-black fjord hung clouds red as
blood--as tongues of flame. My friends passed on, and alone, trembling
with anguish, I listened to the great infinite cry of Nature."

She tapped him on the shoulder. "Come," she said gravely, "leave that
awful picture and eat. You must be dead--you poor man!" Chardon blushed
happily until he saw her cold eyes. "I was trying to catch t