incorruption is sown in corruption; art, beauty, love,
religion; that all our wine is drunk out of skulls, and poured for us by
the mysterious genius of a remote and cruel past."

The doctor's face blazed: his bent figure seemed to straighten itself
and become taller.

"Ah," he cried, growing more dithyrambic, "how lightly you ask what
it means! How confidently you expect an answer! Yet here am I who have
given my life to the study of the Renaissance; who have violated its
tomb, laid open its dead body, and traced the course of every muscle,
bone, and artery; who have sucked its very soul from the pages of poets
and humanists; who have wept and believed with Joachim of Flora, smiled
and doubted with AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini; who have patiently followed
to its source the least inspiration of the masters, and groped in
neolithic caverns and Babylonian ruins for the first unfolding tendrils
of the arabesques of Mantegna and Crivelli; and I tell you that I
stand abashed and ignorant before the mystery of this picture. It means
nothing--it means all things. It may represent the period which saw its
creation; it may represent all ages past and to come. There are volumes
of meaning in the tiniest emblem on the lady's cloak; the blossoms of
its border are rooted in the deepest soil of myth and tradition. Don't
ask what it means, young man, but bow your head in thankfulness for
having seen it!"

Miss Lombard laid her hand on his arm.

"Don't excite yourself, father," she said in the detached tone of a
professional nurse.

He answered with a despairing gesture. "Ah, it's easy for you to talk.
You have years and years to spend with it; I am an old man, and every
moment counts!"

"It's bad for you," she repeated with gentle obstinacy.

The doctor's sacred fury had in fact burnt itself out. He dropped into
a seat with dull eyes and slackening lips, and his daughter drew the
curtain across the picture.

Wyant turned away reluctantly. He felt that his opportunity was slipping
from him, yet he dared not refer to Clyde's wish for a photograph. He
now understood the meaning of the laugh with which Doctor Lombard had
given him leave to carry away all the details he could remember. The
picture was so dazzling, so unexpected, so crossed with elusive and
contradictory suggestions, that the most alert observer, when placed
suddenly before it, must lose his coordinating faculty in a sense of
confused wonder. Yet how valuable to Cl