"I am quite willing to wait." My trembling lips could scarcely frame the words. "Let me have the whole story--every word. I shall not mind if you take hours over it." "You shall have the whole story. Oh, you shall not lose a syllable of it! Ho! ho! it was a master-stroke of craft. Was Borgia or Macchiavelli ever more cunning? I glory in the deed. I love to dwell on it. I act it every night. In the secrecy of my chamber, in the quietness of the picture-gallery, I rehearse the whole tableau of that glorious time. They would not permit me to do this in the day-time, you know," he said, exchanging his excited manner for one that was quite grave and confidential. "They would call me mad: they would take me away--far away from my studio and my easel, and they would put me in a padded room, and I should paint no more. But I am too cunning for them," he cried, his eyes lighting up once more with the fire of madness. "I baffled them. They know not that in the still hours, while they sleep, I am occupied in the work of killing Captain Willard. He takes a deal of killing, too!" he added, resuming as if by magic his quiet air again. "Each night I slay him; yet each night he returns again, clamouring for the death-stroke. I would not believe it if I did not see it for myself. Strange, is it not?" he concluded, turning to me. "It's extraordinary!" my white lips gasped. Which, if it were true, it most certainly was. The maniac stared at me a few seconds with a most bewildered air, looking as if he had forgotten something, or as if he did not quite understand how I came to be in my present position, and then went on: "Yes, this red stain is his. I slew him. Why? Let me think," resting his elbow on the table and pressing his forefinger to his brow for all the world like a sane man. "Let me think; I had a motive for it. What was it? Love of my art? Yes, that was it--art." He paused again, as if he found it difficult to collect his shattered memories. "From the first hour of my calling as an artist it became an object with me to woo and win a woman whose face should be all that a painter could desire. No vulgar model who displays her charms for hire would do for me; my inspiration must come from a pure and beautiful maiden who, fired with the spirit of my enthusiasm, would be devoted to all that was high and noble in art for its own sake. Her lovely shape, delineated in various attitudes on the canvas, should be the making of my pictures. In short," he added, "I was a second Zeuxis in quest of beauty." He made another stop, and then resumed: