yes bulged at her. "My God!" he shouted
fiercely, "you would sell his very soul, if he had left it where you
could!"

She raised the blue eyes and regarded him calmly. "The estate is without
condition," she said.

He groaned as he backed toward the door. The canvas was hugged under his
arm. At the door he paused, looking back over the room. His small eyes
winked fast, and the loose mouth trembled.

"He was a great man, Agnes," he said gently. "We must keep it clean--the
name of Duerer."

She looked up with a little gesture of dismissal. "It is I who bear the
name," she said coldly.

When he was gone she glanced about the room. She went over to a pile of
canvases and turned them rapidly to the light. Each one that bore the
significant monogram she set aside with a look of possession. She came
at last to the one she was searching. It was a small canvas--a Sodom and
Gomorrah. She studied the details slowly. It was not signed. She gave a
little breath of satisfaction, and took up the brush from the bench. She
remembered well the day Albrecht brought it home, and his childish
delight in it. It was one of Joachim Patenir's. Albrecht had given a
Christ head of his own in exchange for it. The brush in her fingers
trembled a little. It inserted the wide-spreading A beneath Lot's flying
legs, and overtraced it with a delicate D. She paused a moment in
thought. Then she raised her head and painted in, with swift, decisive
strokes, high up in one corner of the picture, a date. It was a safe
date--1511--the year he painted his Holy Trinity. There would be no one
to question it.

She sat back, looking her satisfaction.

Seventy-five guldens to account. It atoned a little for the loss of the
Christ.

III

The large drawing-room was vacant. The blinds had been drawn to shut out
the glare, and a soft coolness filled the room. In the dim light of
half-opened shutters the massive furniture loomed large and dark, and
from the wall huge paintings looked down mistily. Gilt frames gleamed
vaguely in the cool gloom. Above the fireplace hung a large canvas, and
out of its depths sombre, waiting eyes looked down upon the vacant room.

The door opened. An old woman had entered. She held in her hand a stout
cane. She walked stiffly across to the window and threw back a shutter.
The window opened into the soft greenness of a Munich garden. She stood
for a minute looking into it. Then she came over to the fireplace and
looked u