He stood there for a minute gibbering and making strange noises like a beast; and then jumping from the bed, he ran to a piece of canvas standing against the wall and covered by a thick drapery. He pulled the cover aside a little way and peeped fearfully behind. Then, in a very paroxysm of terror, he ran shrieking and screaming to the bed. He buried himself under the clothes, and I could hear him sobbing and moaning again as when I first came in. There is to me something inexpressibly pitiful in the sight of a man in tears, and yet I had to stay there for three mortal hours and watch that man. Always the same program,--the look behind the drapery, and then that horrible fright, which in a few minutes was followed by another look. Toward two in the morning he quieted down suddenly, and I went and sat by the bedside trying to soothe him to sleep; but he wanted to talk. “I am almost done for, doctor,” he whispered; “but I have finished it, and it has finished me. I have lived a bad life, a very bad life, but on the canvas behind that drapery is the thing God sent me to avenge my wasted life; and when I am gone and you see what it is that I have lived with for the last two years, you will believe me when I say that I do not fear the terrors of any hell hereafter.” He broke off suddenly and glanced fearfully about the room, but as if reassured by the pressure of my hand, he continued,-- “I lived straight, for over a year, after the pledge I made you, the night of my first trouble. I left all the old companions, and worked hard. You saw the notice of my picture?” he asked eagerly, and I nodded. “During that year I met a woman who was the very type of all that is pure and innocent, and I even dared to think that sometime, after I had lived down my frightful past, I might make her my wife. But one day as I was straining my eyes to catch the last light of the fading afternoon, I chanced to glance over the canvas, and, my God, there creeping out of the darkness, was that hideous thing. I was unconscious for several hours, but when I came to myself I consulted the best physician in Paris, and was under his care for over a month, but it was of no use. Since that day it has followed me everywhere, day and night. I tried to drown it in drink, and it only came the oftener. Then I sent the crowd home, and resolved to paint a likeness of the thing, to have always with me, so as to accustom myself to it, but it was too awful.” His voice trailed off into a shuddering whisper.