d meant to
avoid as much pain as possible. For her love for Joyselle was, of
course, a purely selfish one. For several minutes she sat crouching on
the stairs, utterly undecided as to what her next step was to be. Then a
sound from within the room behind her caused her to turn sharply. A
sound of--not music, but of pitiless, furious scraping and grinding on a
violin.

Could it be Joyselle? It was horrible, like the cries of some animal in
agony. And it went on and on and on.

"It must be Victor," she whispered; "it is his room. But--oh, how
frightful! Has he gone mad? Oh, my God, my God!"

Rising, she stood for a horrible minute bending towards the door, and
then with a quick movement opened it and went in.

The curtains were drawn, but a large window in the roof let in a square
of cross daylight that looked like an island in a surrounding sea of
dusky darkness; and in the light stood Joyselle, his back to her, his
head bent over his violin in a way almost grotesque, as he groaned and
tore at the hapless strings with venomous energy.

Brigit stood, unable to move. It is always an uncanny thing to watch for
any length of time a person who believes himself to be absolutely alone,
and when, as in this case, the person is undergoing, and giving full
vent to a very strong emotion, the strangeness is increased tenfold.

The man was, it was plain, after a week's tremendous and for him wholly
unusual self-restraint, now giving full rein to his great rage over his
miserable situation. As he played, she could see the muscles of his
strong neck move under the brown skin, and his shoulders rise and fall
tumultuously with his uneven breaths. The din he made was almost
unbearable, and she pressed her hands to her ears to shut it out.

The room was very large, and high, and round it, half-way up the dull
yellow walls, ran an old carved gallery, relic of the time when it had
been the studio of a hare-brained painter, a friend of Hazlitt and
Coleridge, a believer in poor young Keats while the rest of the world
laughed at him--in the very early days.

In those days feasts had been held here, and in the gallery, hidden
behind flowering dwarf peach-trees in tubs, stringed instruments were
played--very softly, for the painter of one good picture and dozens of
bad ones, had taste--while his guests sat at his board. Stories are
still told of the small table that used to be brought into the room at
the end of dinner by two little Ethi