She sat down with it in her hands and looked at the beautiful childish head, till the face of the real Arthur rose up afresh before her. How clear it was in every detail! The sensitive lines of the mouth, the wide, earnest eyes, the seraphic purity of expression--they were graven in upon her memory, as though he had died yesterday. Slowly the blinding tears welled up and hid the portrait. Oh, how could she have thought such a thing! It was like sacrilege even to dream of this bright, far-off spirit, bound to the sordid miseries of life. Surely the gods had loved him a little, and had let him die young! Better a thousand times that he should pass into utter nothingness than that he should live and be the Gadfly--the Gadfly, with his faultless neckties and his doubtful witticisms, his bitter tongue and his ballet girl! No, no! It was all a horrible, senseless fancy; and she had vexed her heart with vain imaginings. Arthur was dead. “May I come in?” asked a soft voice at the door. She started so that the portrait fell from her hand, and the Gadfly, limping across the room, picked it up and handed it to her. “How you startled me!” she said. “I am s-so sorry. Perhaps I am disturbing you?” “No. I was only turning over some old things.” She hesitated for a moment; then handed him back the miniature. “What do you think of that head?” While he looked at it she watched his face as though her life depended upon its expression; but it was merely negative and critical. “You have set me a difficult task,” he said. “The portrait is faded, and a child's face is always hard to read. But I should think that child would grow into an unlucky man, and the wisest thing he could do would be to abstain from growing into a man at all.” “Why?” “Look at the line of the under-lip. Th-th-that is the sort of nature that feels pain as pain and wrong as wrong; and the world has no r-r-room for such people; it needs people who feel nothing but their work.” “Is it at all like anyone you know?” He looked at the portrait more closely. “Yes. What a curious thing! Of course it is; very like.” “Like whom?” “C-c-cardinal Montan-nelli. I wonder whether his irreproachable Eminence has any nephews, by the way? Who is it, if I may ask?” “It is a portrait, taken in childhood, of the friend I told you about the other day----” “Whom you killed?” She winced in spite of herself. How lightly, how cruelly he used that dreadful word! “Yes, whom I killed--if he is really dead.” “If?” She kept her eyes on his face. “I have sometimes doubted,” she said. “The body was never found. He may have run away from home, like you, and gone to South America.” “Let us hope not. That would be a bad memory to carry about with you. I have d-d-done some hard fighting in my t-time, and have sent m-more than one man to Hades, perhaps; but if I had it on my conscience that I had sent any l-living thing to South America, I should sleep badly----”