"For instance, I have taken a fancy to you, my friend. A real fancy. I liked you from the first moment that I saw you. I don't know when, so suddenly, I have taken a fancy to any one. But to care for you deeply, first--yes, first--I would show you the meaning of pain. . . ." Here his body suddenly quivered from the feet to the head. ". . . And I could not, liking you so much, do that unless you were seriously to annoy me, interfere in any way with my simple plans"--the hands pressed deeply into the shoulders--"yes, only then could we come really to know one another . . . after such a crisis what friends we might be, sharing our power together! What friends! Dear me! Dear me!" He moved away, turning to the table, looking down on the prints that were spread out there. "Yes, yes, I could show you then my power." His voice vibrated with sudden excitement. "You think me absurd. Yes, yes, you do. You do. Don't deny it now. As though I couldn't perceive it. Do you think me so stupid? Absurd, with my ridiculous hair, my ugly body. Oh! I know! You can't hide it from me. You laugh like the rest. Secretly, you laugh. You are smiling behind your hand. Well, smile then, but how foolish of you to be so taken in by physical appearances. Do you know my power? Do you know what I could do to you now by merely clapping my hands? "If my fingers were at your throat, at your breast, and you could not move but must wait my wish, my plan for you, would you think me then so absurd, my figure, my hair, ridiculous? You would be as though in the hands of a god. I should be as a god to you to do with you what I wished. . . . "What is there that is so beautiful that I, ugly as I am, cannot do as I wish with it? This----" Suddenly he took up the "Orvieto" and held it forward under the candle-light. "This is one of the most beautiful things of its kind that man has ever made, and I--am I not one of the ugliest human beings at whom men laugh?--well, would you see my power over it? I have it in my hands. It is mine. It is mine. I can destroy it in one instant----" The beautiful thing shook in his hand. To Harkness it seemed suddenly to be endued with a human vitality. He saw it--the high sharp razor-edged rocks, the town so confidingly resting on that strength, all the daily life at the foot, the oxen, the peasants, the lovely flame-like trees, the shining reaches of valley beyond, all radiating the heat of that Italian summer. He sprang to his feet. "Don't touch it!" he cried. "Leave it! Leave it!" Crispin tore it into a thousand pieces, wrenching it, snapping at it with his fingers like an animal. The pieces flaked the air. A white shower circled in the candle-light then scattered about the table, about the floor. Something died. A clock somewhere struck half-past twelve. Crispin moved from the table. Very gently, almost beseechingly, he looked into Harkness's face.