een volumes about this disease," she said. "There _must_
be such a disease!"

"There is," he said. "I have it badly. But I never had it before I first
saw you in the Park!"

"Mr. Carden--this is the wildest absurdity--"

"I know it. Wildness is a symptom. I'm mad as a hatter. I've got every
separate symptom, and I wish it was infectious and contagious and
catching and fatal!"

She made an effort to turn the pages to the chapter entitled "Manias and
Illusions," but he laid his hand across the book and his clear eyes
defied her.

"Mr. Carden--"

Her smooth hand trembled under his, then, suddenly nerveless, relaxed.
With an effort she lifted her head; their eyes met, spellbound.

"_You_ have _every_ symptom," he said unsteadily--"every one! What have
you to say?"

Her fascinated eyes held his.

"What have you to say?" he repeated under his breath--"you, with every
symptom, and your heavenly radiant beauty to confirm them--that splendid
youthful loveliness which blinds and stuns me as I look--as I speak--as
I tell you that I love you. That is my malady; that is the beginning and
the end of it; love!"

She sat speechless, immovable, as one under enchantment.

"All my life," he said, "I have spent in painting shadows. But the
shadows were those dim celestial shapes cast by your presence in the
world. You tell me that the world is better for my work; that I have
offered my people beauty and a sort of truth, which they had never
dreamed of until I revealed it? Yet what inspired me was the shadow
only, for I had never seen the substance; I had never believed I should
ever see the living source of the shadows which inspired me. And now I
see; now I have seen with my own eyes. Now the confession of faith is no
longer a blind creed, born of instinct. You live! You are you! What I
believed from necessity I find proved in fact. The occult no longer can
sway one who has seen. And you, who, without your knowledge or mine,
have always been the one and only source of any good in me or in my
work--why is it strange that I loved you at first sight?--that I
worshiped you at first breath?--I, who, like him who raises his altar to
'the unknown god,' raised my altar to truth and beauty? And a miracle
has answered me."

She rose, the beautiful dazed eyes meeting his, both hands clasping the
ninth volume of Lamour's great monograph to her breast as though to
protect it from him--from him who was threatening her, enthralling her,