It lay, the head thrown back, the eyes closed, the lips slightly parted as if asking for a last caress. The hair waved away from the delicate, somewhat sunken temples, forming the pillow on which it rested. A calm expression of peace lay over the angelically pure features that had the soft whiteness of ivory. There was no colour save a faint tint of pink on the beseeching mouth. Yes, it was peace that was the principal expression of that face, and yet there was also a sad yearning in it, as if the closed eyes longed to raise their lids a last time to look upon a face they loved.... The old man's head now lay on the hard table upon his outstretched arms; he was overwhelmed by some tremendous emotion, unable to look at those silent features. The youth knew not what force moved him, but he knelt down beside the emaciated old figure and, taking it into his strong young arms, he drew the bowed head towards him, and held it long against his heart in a silent embrace. After a while both looked up and the grey hermit pressed one of his shaking hands on the young man's head; the other he laid with a caressing movement against the marble face. "I have worked at this with the last strength of my feeble old hands. And each day for many years I laboured to create the fairness of this face which I loved, but which never was mine! "I will not weary thee with the story of my life; it is dark and ugly, but this thou shalt know: I loved her, and she gave me all the passion of her pure heart. She knew not who I was, and when she found it out she could not bear the truth, so she searched a cold grave in the deep, dark floods. Thus she lay when last I looked upon her; the vision burnt itself deep into my brain for ever. For long, long years after she had crossed my path I continued to live a wicked life, full of dark deeds, full of treachery, keeping faith with none. "But when, old and bent, I came to these solitudes her face alone was always with me. Then I began to carve upon the snowy marble the features I had loved the most in this world. "Day by day I toiled, for my fingers were stiff and trembling, but I felt I could not die before I had completed this work of love. I felt that if I could conjure into life the marvel of her face as it was that day when they took her out of the cruel water and laid her, for ever silent, before me, her murderer, I would find forgiveness before that God I had always mocked but had learnt to believe in here in this vast solitude so near His sky! "It is but a short while ago that I completed my work; thou seest thyself how surpassing fair it is, and since that day peace at last seems to be spreading very slowly over my soul...." The old man paused, then drawing the youth quite near to him, he took his head in both his hands, bent it gently back, saying in a solemn voice: