He gave her a smile which was clearly the lingering reflection of some inner light. “I didn’t mean to be so late,” he said, tossing aside his hat and the little red volume that served as a clue to his explorations. “I turned in to the Louvre for a minute after I left you this morning, and the place fairly swallowed me up--I couldn’t get away from it. I’ve been there ever since.” He threw himself into a chair and glanced about for his pipe. “It takes time,” he continued musingly, “to get at them, to make out what they’re saying--the big fellows, I mean. They’re not a communicative lot. At first I couldn’t make much out of their lingo--it was too different from mine! But gradually, by picking up a hint here and there, and piecing them together, I’ve begun to understand; and to-day, by Jove, I got one or two of the old chaps by the throat and fairly turned them inside out--made them deliver up their last drop.” He lifted a brilliant eye to her. “Lord, it was tremendous!” he declared. He had found his pipe and was musingly filling it. Claudia waited in silence. “At first,” he began again, “I was afraid their language was too hard for me--that I should never quite know what they were driving at; they seemed to cold-shoulder me, to be bent on shutting me out. But I was bound I wouldn’t be beaten, and now, to-day”--he paused a moment to strike a match--“when I went to look at those things of mine it all came over me in a flash. By Jove! it was as if I’d made them all into a big bonfire to light me on my road!” His wife was trembling with a kind of sacred terror. She had been afraid to pray for light for him, and here he was joyfully casting his whole past upon the pyre! “Is there nothing left?” she faltered. “Nothing left? There’s everything!” he exulted. “Why, here I am, not much over forty, and I’ve found out already--already!” He stood up and began to move excitedly about the room. “My God! Suppose I’d never known! Suppose I’d gone on painting things like that forever! Why, I feel like those chaps at revivalist meetings when they get up and say they’re saved! Won’t somebody please start a hymn?” Claudia, with a tremulous joy, was letting herself go on the strong current of his emotion; but it had not yet carried her beyond her depth, and suddenly she felt hard ground underfoot. “Mrs. Davant--“ she exclaimed. He stared, as though suddenly recalled from a long distance. “Mrs. Davant?” “We were to have met her--this afternoon--now--“ “At the gallery? Oh, that’s all right. I put a stop to that; I went to see her after I left you; I explained it all to her.” “All?” “I told her I was going to begin all over again.” Claudia’s heart gave a forward bound and then sank back hopelessly. “But the panels--?” “That’s all right too. I told her about the panels,” he reassured her. “You told her--?” “That I can’t paint them now. She doesn’t understand, of course; but she’s the best little woman and she trusts me.”