he breast over his heart; the arm was a limp weight,
but the muscles were firm, round, and solid. The first qualm troubled
her as she realized that this must be a young man, at least a man in the
prime of his physical strength.

Then it occurred to her that often bullets fired into the breast are
deflected from the heart by bones; it would be far more certain to lay
the muzzle against the temple--press the trigger--the soul would depart.

The soul! She paused with a thrill of wonder. A little touch would loose
the swift spirit. The soul! For the first time she saw the tragedy from
the viewpoint of the unknown man. His life was cut in the middle; truly
a blind fate had reached out and chosen him from a whole city. Yet she
was merely hastening the inevitable. She reached out and found his
forehead.

It was broad and high. Tracing it lightly with the tips of her fingers
she discovered two rather prominent lumps of bony structure over the
eyes. Some one had told her that this represented a strong power of
memory. She tried to visualize that feature alone, and very suddenly, as
a face shows when a man lights his cigarette on the street at night, she
saw in memory the figure of Rembrandt's "Portrait of a Young Painter."
He sits at his drawing board, his pencil poised, ready for the stroke
which shall give vital character to his sketch. There is only one high
light, falling on the lower part of the face. Inspiration has tightened
the sensitive mouth; the questing eyes peer out from the shadow of the
soft cap. She broke off from her vision to realize with a start that
when she touched the trigger she would be stepping back through the
centuries and killing her dream of the original of Rembrandt's picture.
A foolish fancy, truly, but in the dark a dream may be as true, as vivid
as reality.

The unconscious man sighed. She leaned close and listened to his
breathing, soft, hurried, irregular as if he struggled in his sleep, as
if the subconscious mind were calling to the conscious: "Awake! Death is
here!"

At least there was plenty of time. She need not fire the shot until he
moved. She laid the revolver on her lap and absently allowed her hands
to wander over his face, lingering lightly on each feature. She grew
more alert after a moment. Every particle of her energy was concentrated
on seeing that face--on seeing it through her sense of touch. The blind,
she knew, grow so dextrous that the delicate nerves of their finger ti