"Do you know what he did to me and mine?"

"A few of us know," said Guilder, gently, "--your old friends."

There came a pale, infernal flicker into Drene's eyes:

"I'll take your commission for that altar piece," he said.

"What is it? An Annunciation?"



IV

Composition had been determined upon, and the sketch completed by
the middle of August; Cecile had sat for him every day from nine
until five; every evening they had dined together at the seashore or
other suburban and cool resorts. Together they had seen every summer
entertainment in town, had spent the cooler, starlit evenings
together in his studio, chatting, reading loud sometimes, sometimes
discussing he work in hand or other subjects of he moment, even
topics covering a wider and more varied range than he had ever
before discussed with any woman.

He seemed to have become utterly changed; the dark preoccupation had
been absent from his face--the gauntness, the grayness, seemed to
have become subdued; the deep lines of pain, imperceptible at times,
smoothed out and shadowed in an almost gay resurgence of youth.

If, during the first week or two of her companionship, his gaiety