A year after his return he was the ghost of his old self. He was haggard and often unshaven; his attire was shabby and carelessly put on; he had lost his old, jaunty air, and went by you with a hurried pace, and his head and shoulders bent with an indescribable suggestion of humility. The fear of having her break out, regardless of any one who might be by, which hung over him at home, haunted him out of doors, too. The avenger of Mrs. Dobb the first had broken his spirit as effectually as he had broken Mrs. Dobb's heart. Smith occupied the next studio to him, and one evening I was smoking there, when an atrocious uproar commenced in the next room. We could distinguish Frank's voice and his wife's, and another strange one. Smith looked at me, grinned, and shrugged his shoulders. The disturbance ceased in a couple of minutes, and a door banged. Then came a crash, a shrill and furious scream, and the sound of feet. We ran to the door, in time to see Mrs. Dobb, her hair in a tangle down her back, in a dirty wrapper and slipshod slippers, stumbling down stairs. We posted after her, Smith nearly breaking his neck by tripping over one of the slippers which she had shed as she ran. The theatres were just out and the streets full of people, among whom she jostled her way like the mad woman that she was. We came up with her as she overtook her husband, who was walking with McGilp, the dealer who handled his pictures. She seized him by the arm and screamed out: "I told you I would come with you." His face for a moment was the face of a devil, full of fury and despair. I saw his fist clench itself and the big vein in his forehead swell. But he slipped his hands into his pockets, looked appealingly at McGilp, and said, shrugging his shoulders, "You see how it is, Mac?" McGilp nodded and walked abruptly away, with a look full of contempt and scorn. We mingled with the crowd and saw the poor wretches go off together, he grim and silent, she hysterically excited--with all the world staring at them. Smith slept on a lounge in my room that night. "I couldn't get a wink up there," he said, "and I don't want to be even the ear witness of a murder." The night did not witness the tragedy he anticipated, though. Next day, Frank Dobb came to see me--a compliment he had not paid me for months. He was the incarnation of abject misery, and so nervous that he could scarcely speak intelligibly. "I saw you in the crowd last night, old man," he said, looking at the floor and twisting and untwisting his fingers. "What do you think of it? A nice life for a fellow to lead, eh?" What else could I reply than, "Why do you lead it then?" "Why?" he repeated, breaking into a hollow, uneasy laugh. "Why, because I love her, damn me! and I deserve it all." "Is this what you came to tell me?" I asked.