ould that trouble
you?"

She hesitated, but it seemed to her that the questing eyes of
Rembrandt's portrait looked upon her through the dark--eyes reverent and
eager at once.

She said: "You may do as you will."

His unmanacled hand went up, found her hair, passed slowly over its
folds.

"It is like silk to the touch, but far more delicate, for there is life
in every thread of it. It is abundant and long. Ah, it must shine when
the sun strikes upon it! It is golden hair, _madame_, no pale-yellow
like sea-sand, but glorious gold, and when it hangs across the
whiteness of your throat and bosom the hearts of men stir. Speak! Tell
me I have named it!"

She waited till the sob grew smaller in her throat.

"Yes, it is golden hair," she said.

"I could not be wrong."

His hand passed down her face, fluttering lightly, and she sensed the
eagerness of every touch. Cold fear took hold of her lest those
searching fingers should discover the truth.

"Your eyes are blue. Yes, yes! Deep-blue for golden hair. It cannot be
otherwise. Speak."

"God help me!"

"_Madame?_"

"I have been too vain of my eyes, sir. Yes, they are blue."

The fingers were on her cheeks, trembling on her lips, touching chin and
throat.

"You are divine. It was foredoomed that this should be! Yes, my life has
been one long succession of miracles, but the greatest was reserved
until the end. I have followed my heart through the world in search of
perfect beauty and now I am about to die, I find it. Oh, God! For one
moment with canvas, brush, and the blessed light of the sun! It cannot
be! No miracle is complete; but I carry out into the eternal night one
perfect picture. Canvas and paint? No, no! Your picture must be drawn in
the soul and colored with love. The last miracle and the greatest! Three
days? No, three ages, three centuries of happiness, for are you not
here?"

Who will say that there is not an eye with which we pierce the night? To
each of these two sitting in the utter dark there came a vision.
Imagination became more real than reality. He saw his ideal of the
woman, that picture which every man carries in his heart to think of in
the times of silence, to see in every void. And she saw her ideal of
manly power. The dark pressed them together as if with the force of
physical hands. For a moment they waited, and in that moment each knew
the heart of the other, for in that utter void of light and sound, they
saw with the eyes of t