time I noticed that its walls were covered with pictures,
unframed, and that an easel stood in the light of each
window. We stopped before one of them. On a large canvas
that was stretched across it I saw a likeness of myself. The
eyes wore a haggard look which seemed unnatural. But there
was something strangely real about it, in spite of that.

"Wonderful!" said I.

Rayel started at the sound of my voice, and glanced from one
to the other with a puzzled, inquiring look. Turning to his
father, he uttered some strange monosyllable in a deep
voice. Then he took my hand and walked back and forth across
the room with me, smiling in great delight. I was fascinated
by one of the pictures which showed a great gleaming eye
with a suggestion of lightning in its fiery depths, as if
taken at the keenest flash of fury. To intensify its
fierceness a human hand was raised in front of it so as to
throw a dark shadow across the canvas.

"It is the lion's eye," said my uncle, who was standing near
me.

There were other paintings--many of them equally strange and
wonderful--hanging on the walls, some of which contained
material he could not have derived from direct observation.
It was easy to discern in his work the fragments of nature
that came within the limited command of his own eyes--the
falling snow, the changing phases of the sky and of
vegetation--for they were presented with a stronger and more