Then suddenly she sprang up, and seizing his hands with hers, she said in a piercing voice: "You are a great doctor. Surely--surely you can keep this one life for me a little longer." As they stood, Fane was facing the statue, which was at her back, and while she spoke his eyes were drawn from the woman he loved to the marble thing he senselessly hated. It struck him that a ghastly change had stolen over it. A sudden flicker of absolute life surely infused it, quickened it even while she spoke, stole through the limbs one by one, welled up to the eyes as light pierces from a depth, flowed through all the marble. A pulse beat in the dead, cold heart. A mind rippled into the rigid, watching face. There was no absolute movement, and yet there was the sense of stir. Fane, absorbed in horror, seemed to watch an act of creation, to see life poured from some invisible and unknown source into the bodily chamber that had been void and dark. Motionless he saw the statue dead; motionless he saw the statue live. He drew his hands from Sydney's. He was too powerfully impressed to speak, but she looked up into his face, turned, and followed his eyes. She, too, observed the change, for her lips parted, and a wild amazement shone in her eyes. Then she touched Fane's arm, and whispered, rather in awe than in horror, "Go--go to him. See if anything has happened. I will stay and watch here." With a hushed tread Fane left the studio, passed through the hall, ascended the stairs to the sculptor's room. Outside the door he hesitated for a moment. He was trembling. He heard a clock ticking within. It sounded very loud, like a hammer beating in his ears. He pushed the door open at length, and entered. Brune's tall figure was sitting in an armchair, bowed over a table on which lay an open Art magazine. His head lay hidden on his arms, which were crossed. Fane raised the face and turned it up towards him. It was the face of a dead man. He looked at it, and smiled. Then he stole down again to the studio, where Sydney was still standing. "Yes?" she said interrogatively, as he entered. "He is dead," Fane answered. She only bowed her head, as if in assent. She stood a moment, then she turned her tearless eyes to him, and said:-- "Why could not you save him?" "Because I am human," Fane answered. "And we did not say good-bye," she said. Fane was strung up. Conflicting feelings found a wild playground in his soul. His nerves were in a state of abnormal excitement, and something seemed to let go in him--the something that holds us back, normally, from mad follies. He suddenly caught Sydney's hand, and in a choked voice said:-- "He is dead. Think a little of the living." She looked at him, wondering. "Think of the living that love you. He neither hates nor loves any more. Sydney! Sydney!" As she understood his meaning she wrung her hand out of his, and said, as one trying to clear the road for reason:--