“I have been examining your portrait,” I said. “It is a very—curious picture, is it not?” A faint little glow of color came into the girl’s cheeks. She seemed somehow stronger now; but it was a gain of strength rather more mental than physical. I sensed dimly that, talking with me, her mind was clearing. She hesitated, regarding me appraisingly. “A very, very curious portrait indeed it is, _señor_.” Again she paused; and then, as though she had come to a sudden decision, she added slowly: “A very curious portrait, _señor_. To me it has no meaning. Once I said that to the _maestro_, and he was very angry. He told me I was mad, because I could not see the art—the wonderful art in his work. He beat me then.” She shuddered at the memory. “But that was very long ago, _señor_, and never have I said it since. And every night I pose.” “You are ill, _señorita_?” I said gently. “The portrait needs so much of me,” she answered. And then some thought or memory that her words did not reveal made her shudder again. “I am ill, _señor_, as you say. Very ill. And that, too, makes the _maestro_ very angry. I am not so beautiful now for the portrait. And soon I shall die—and then I can pose no longer.” I leaned toward her. “You can trust me, _señorita_,” I said. “You are ill-treated here—he treats you badly?” She looked searchingly into my eyes; then she swiftly drew back her loose sleeve. The white flesh of her upper arm was scarred with many scars. “The portrait, _señor_—it is life he paints there. And one cannot paint life without using life to paint with. That he says, _señor_—and he takes what there is in me to give.” She spoke softly, tremulously, half in terror at her temerity at talking thus of the dreaded _maestro_, half with an air of wan appeal. And with her words, in a sudden flood of horror, the meaning of all that I had seen came clear to my mind. I realized now how this miserable madman, painting formless daubs upon his canvas, was using the life-blood of his victim. With revulsion in my heart, I understood at last the meaning of those ugly brown smears that mingled and predominated among the pigments on the canvas—the dried and faded stains of human blood. And here, sitting close beside me, was the victim of this insane necromancy—the shell of what had once been womanhood—this body of a girl being drained of its life drop by drop. The girl’s voice brought me back to myself with a start. “He takes the blood that I have to give, _señor_—and each day the painting grows more beautiful. He says I am mad that I cannot see its beauty—that the brown I see is not brown, but red—vivid, beautiful red—the red of life itself. “But you, _señor_”—she put her hand upon mine; its touch hardly held the warmth of the living—“you, a stranger who, why I know not, comes here to this room—you see, too, the way it looks to me, do you not, _señor_? Ah, then, indeed I am not mad—and it is he who sees upon the canvas what is not there.”