gn gentleman was on the landing who insisted on seeing
Angela, even though she was alone. After giving a long and not
flattering description of his appearance, the woman held out the card
he had given her. Angela glanced at it and read the name of Filmore
Durand, and above, in pencil, half-a-dozen words: 'I have brought you
a portrait.'

Angela did not understand in the least, though she tried hard to
concentrate her thoughts.

'Ask the gentleman to come in,' she answered at last, hardly knowing
what she said.

She turned her face to the window again, and in the course of thirty
seconds, when she was roused by Durand's voice in the room, she had
almost forgotten that he was in the house. She had not heard English
spoken since she had left his studio on the morning when her father
died, and she started at the sound. For weeks, nothing had made such
an impression on her.

She rose to receive the great painter, who was standing near the table
in the middle of the room, looking at her in surprise and real
anxiety, for she was little more than a shadow of the girl he had
painted six weeks or two months earlier. He himself had brought in a
good-sized picture, wrapped in new brown paper; it stood beside him on
the floor, reaching as high as his waist, and his left hand rested on
the upper edge. He held out the other to Angela, who took it
apathetically.

'You have been very ill,' he said in a tone of concern.

'No,' she answered. 'I am only a little tired. Will you not sit down?'

She sank into her seat again, and one thin hand lay on the cushioned
arm of the chair. Instead of seating himself, Durand lifted the
picture, still wrapped up, and set it upright on the table, so that it
faced her.

'I heard,' he said in a low voice, 'so I did this for you from memory
and a photograph.'

There was a sudden crackling and tearing of the strong paper as he
ripped it off with a single movement, and then there was absolute
silence for some time. Angela seemed not even to breathe, as she
leaned forward with parted lips and unwinking, wondering eyes.

Then, without even a warning breath, a cry broke from her heart.

'He is not dead! You have seen him again! He is alive--they have
cheated me!'

Then she choked and leaned back, pressing her handkerchief to her
mouth.

Instead of answering, the painter bent his head and looked down
sideways at his own astounding handiwork, and for the second time in
that year he was almost s