With a cold shudder, Henry Montagu believed him. He realized that as yet he had done nothing for him. Food and drink had occurred to him, but in the minutes that they had passed together the stranger had grown more virile. He was no longer the incredible figure of wretchedness that had dashed into the room. He was sitting forward in the chair now, his eyes on the portrait. "Is that your wife?" he asked. "My--my dead wife," answered Mr. Montagu. His own eyes reverting again and again to the lacerated wrists, he did not see the changing expressions in his visitor's as they studied the eyes of the portrait; but as the boy now leaped impulsively to his feet he saw in them a fierce gleam that was like the hatred of a maniac. He thrilled with renewed terror as the boy once more sprang to him like an animal, and with a growl in his throat rushed toward the portrait. "Stop!" he shouted, and the boy almost cringed to a halt in the middle of the floor. When, after his first chill of horror at the act itself, Henry Montagu realized that the desecration was his own thought, his own impulse carried into fierce determination, he sank weak and dizzy into the chair that the boy had left. But again he mastered his frightened mind and thrust away from it the sinister oppression of omen and coincidence. Unwillingly but helplessly, he was letting into his thoughts the theory that, after he had opened the door instead of before he had opened it, the room had been harboring a maniac. And the theory stabbed him. A mushroom growth of tenderness had germinated in his pity and was growing nearer and nearer to a personal liking for the beautiful, pathetic figure of youth that stood before him, wilted and helpless again, in the center of the room. "My boy," he said quietly, "I ought to resent that but strangely enough I don't find myself resenting the idea of your taking strange liberties in my house. In fact, I--I had that same impulse. I nearly did that myself, just before you burst in here." The young man looked at him in amazement. "_You_ were going to turn--Mrs. Montagu's picture to the wall? Wh--why, you old dirty beast!" To Henry Montagu there was no vulgarity in the words. Their huge reproach of him drove every other quality out of them and a deep color into his face. "But I--I quelled the impulse. And y--you would actually have done it!" he stammered. "I had a reason and a right to!" cried the young man. "I'd never seen it before and if it repelled me I had a right never to look at it again! But she was _your wife_!" Once more he stood, his eyes avoiding the portrait and wandering hungrily about the rest of the beautiful room. "Well," he said, after a few moments, "good-by!" And he walked toward the door.