't
promised?"

She shook her head.

"Don't, then; remember that."

She made no answer, and the key turned in the lock.

As he passed out of the house, its scowling cornice and facade of
ravaged brick looked down on him with the startlingness of a strange
face, seen momentarily in a crowd, and impressing itself on the brain as
part of an inevitable future. Above the doorway, the marble hand reached
out like the cry of an imprisoned anguish.

Wyant turned away impatiently.

"Rubbish!" he said to himself. "SHE isn't walled in; she can get out if
she wants to."

IV

Wyant had any number of plans for coming to Miss Lombard's aid: he was
elaborating the twentieth when, on the same afternoon, he stepped into
the express train for Florence. By the time the train reached Certaldo
he was convinced that, in thus hastening his departure, he had followed
the only reasonable course; at Empoli, he began to reflect that the
priest and the Levite had probably justified themselves in much the same
manner.

A month later, after his return to England, he was unexpectedly relieved
from these alternatives of extenuation and approval. A paragraph in
the morning paper announced the sudden death of Doctor Lombard, the
distinguished English dilettante who had long resided in Siena. Wyant's
justification was complete. Our blindest impulses become evidence of
perspicacity when they fall in with the course of events.

Wyant could now comfortably speculate on the particular complications
from which his foresight had probably saved him. The climax was
unexpectedly dramatic. Miss Lombard, on the brink of a step which,
whatever its issue, would have burdened her with retrospective
compunction, had been set free before her suitor's ardor could have had
time to cool, and was now doubtless planning a life of domestic felicity
on the proceeds of the Leonardo. One thing, however, struck Wyant as
odd--he saw no mention of the sale of the picture. He had scanned the
papers for an immediate announcement of its transfer to one of the
great museums; but presently concluding that Miss Lombard, out of
filial piety, had wished to avoid an appearance of unseemly haste in the
disposal of her treasure, he dismissed the matter from his mind. Other
affairs happened to engage him; the months slipped by, and gradually the
lady and the picture dwelt less vividly in his mind.

It was not till five or six years later, when chance took him again to
Sie