Despite his words he was jumping about with nervous, excited gestures. I sat in the armchair he had indicated, and looked from him to the picture on the easel over which a drapery was flung, and back again to him. For an indefinable feeling of dread was coming over me, as I noted the disordered dress and the bloodshot eyes of my strange host. He had failed, then, to keep his pledges; had yielded to temptation. My hoped-for regeneration was a failure, and all was as it used to be with him. But yet it might be overwork and the strain of a night without sleep that gave him such a dissipated aspect. I tried to think it was so. Meanwhile he had seated himself at an old worn-out piano, and looking across to me was pounding out bar after bar of passionate music. "Really, this is too much! I cannot stay and endure this absurdity," I cried, and I walked to the door. But he darted at me and seized my hand with fierceness and the grip of a vice, so that I shook with fear. "You shall not go, not until you have seen her,--her I adore. Sit there!" he thundered; and then, with an apparent sense of his own harshness, he fell on his knees before me and kissed my fingers with feverish frenzy. "My queen! my own!" he cried. I was so frightened I could not speak. What was I to do? To scream would not have availed me in that attic,--and yet I wonder now I did not try to scream. I tore my hands away from him and sprang from my seat, he not seeking to restrain me, but still kneeling and gazing up at me with wild but penitent eyes. "Open the door, sir, and let me go! That is the least return you can make for your rudeness," I said. "No, no, no!" he cried with a wail of grief. "I have insulted my goddess. I have broken her heart. She will not speak to me. But look, look!" he said, darting again toward the canvas and throwing aside the drapery. "She is here! I have her here forever. No one can rob me of her now." Fancy my emotions. It was a portrait of myself! I shall never forget the tipsy cunning of Paul Barr's expression, as he watched the effect of his legerdemain. The portrait was excellent; it was, indeed, a masterpiece. I was sufficiently in my senses to appreciate that, though my absorbing thought was how to get out of the room. For some moments we each kept our pose,--I standing surveying the picture, and he with his eyes bent upon me, leaning against the easel which was in the pathway to the door. Suddenly, and to my intense surprise, he pronounced my name,-- "Virginia!" It was a whisper almost, and spoken as one might breathe the name of a saint. "Virginia!" Then with a low cry he stepped forward a pace or two and dropped on his knees again.