at a territory he had won. If you know anything of painting,
Miss Manning, you will go with me so far as to admit that my
indiscretion was impersonal. I, a poet who expressed his emotions in
terms of color, was alone with Aphrodite and a nymph, on a June
morning, in a leafy English park. I don't think I should be blamed,
but envied. I should not be confessing a fault, but claiming
recognition as one favored of the gods."

Trenholme was speaking in earnest now, and Sylvia thrilled to the
music of his voice. But if her heart throbbed and a strange fluttering
made itself felt in her heart, her utterance, by force of repression,
was so cold and unmoved that Trenholme became more downcast than ever.

"I do paint a little," she said, "and I can understand that
the--er--statue and the lake offer a charming subject; but I am still
at a loss to know why you have thought fit to come here and tell me
these things."

"It is my wretched task to make that clear, at least," he cried
contritely, forcing himself to turn and look through the trees at a
landscape now glowing in the mellow light of a declining sun. "When
you had gone I sat there, working hard for a time, but finally
yielding to the spell of an unexpected and, therefore, a most
delightful romance. A vision of rare beauty had come into my life and
gone from it, all in the course of a magic hour. Is it strange that I
should linger in the shrine?

"I was aroused by a gunshot, but little dreamed that grim Death was
stalking through Fairyland. Still, I came to my everyday senses,
packed up my sketches and color box, and tramped off to Roxton,
singing as I went. Hours afterward, I learned of the tragedy which
had taken place so near the place where I had snatched a glimpse of
the Hesperides. It was known that I had been in the park at the time.
I had met and spoken to Bates, your head keeper, and the local
policeman, Farrow.

"A detective came, a man named Furneaux; a jolly clever chap, too, but
a most disturbing reasoner. He showed me that my drawings--the one
sketch, at any rate, which I held sacred--would prove my sheet anchor
when I was brought into the stormy waters of inquest and law courts.
It is obvious that every person who was in that locality at half past
nine this morning must explain his or her presence beyond all doubt or
questioning. I shall be obliged to say, of course, that I was in the
park fully two hours, from seven thirty A. M. onward. What was I
doin