"He did not see me. He whistled to the dog and stroked his head, and then as the cows went through a gate, he turned and faced the rising sun, the light full on his face. He looked at the valley coming into sight through the mists. He was so close to me I could have tossed a stone to him--I shall never know how long he stood there--how long I had that face before me." The narrator was silent. Madame Orloff opened her eyes and looked at him piercingly. "I cannot tell you--I cannot!" he answered her. 'Who can tell of life and death and a new birth? It was as though I were thinking with my finger-nails, or the hair of my head--a part of me I had never before dreamed had feeling. My eyes were dazzled. I could have bowed myself to the earth like Moses before the burning bush. How can I tell you--? How can I tell you?" "He was--?" breathed the woman. "Hubert van Eyck might have painted God the Father with those eyes--that mouth--that face of patient power--of selfless, still beatitude.--Once the dog, nestling by his side, whimpered and licked his hand. He looked down, he turned his eyes away from his vision, and looked down at the animal and smiled. Jehovah! What a smile. It seemed to me then that if God loves humanity, he can have no kinder smile for us. And then he looked back across the valley--at the sky, at the mountains, at the smoke rising from the houses below us--he looked at the world--at some vision, some knowledge--what he saw--what he saw--! "I did not know when he went. I was alone in that crimson wood. "I went back to the village. I went back to the city. I would not speak to him till I had some honor worthy to offer him. I tried to think what would mean most to him. I remembered the drawing of the Ste. Anne. I remembered his years in Paris, and I knew what would seem most honor to him. I cabled Drouot of the Luxembourg Gallery. I waited in New York till he came. I showed him the picture. I told him the story. He was on fire! "We were to go back to the mountains together, to tell him that his picture would hang in the Luxembourg, and then in the Louvre--that in all probability he would be decorated by the French government, that other pictures of his would live for all time in Paris, in London, in Brussels--a letter came from the woman, his niece. He was dead." The actress fell back in her chair, her hands over her face. The surgeon stirred wrathfully. "Heavens and earth, Vieyra, what beastly, ghastly, brutally tragic horror are you telling us, anyhow?" The old Jew moistened his lips and was silent. After a moment he said: "I should not have told you. I knew you could not understand." Madame Orloff looked up sharply. "Do you mean--is it possible that _you_ mean that if we had seen him--had seen that look--we would--that he had had all that an artist--"