gradually swelled to thousands.  For by-and-by the history of the picture got about in disjointed morsels of information and gossip which soon formed a consecutive and fairly correct narration.  Experts criticized it,—­critics “explained” it—­and presently nothing was talked of in the art world but “The Coming of Christ” and the artist who painted it, Angela Sovrani.  A woman!—­only a woman!  It seemed incredible—­impossible!  For why should a woman think?  Why should a woman dare to be a genius?  It seemed very strange!  How much more natural for her to marry some decent man of established position and be content with babies and plain needlework!  Here was an abnormal prodigy in the ways of womanhood,—­a feminine creature who ventured to give an opinion of her own on something else than dress,—­who presumed as it were, to set the world thinking hard on a particular phase of religious history!  Then, as one after the other talked and whispered and commented, the story of Angela’s own private suffering began to eke out bit by bit,—­how she had been brutally stabbed m her own studio in front of her own picture by no other than her own betrothed husband Florian Varillo, who was moved to his murderous act by a sudden impulse of jealousy,—­and how that same Varillo had met with his deserts in death by fire in the Trappist monastery on the Campagna.  And the excitement over the great picture became more and more intense—­especially when it was known that it would soon be taken away from Rome never to be seen there again.  Angela herself knew little of her rapidly extending fame,—­she was in Paris with the Princesse D’Agramont who had taken her there immediately after Monsignor Gherardi’s visit to her father.  She was not told of Florian Varillo’s death till she had been some days in the French capital, and then it was broken to her as gently as possible.  But the result was disastrous.  The strength she had slowly regained seemed now to leave her altogether, and she was stricken with a mute despair which was terrible to witness.  Hour after hour, she lay on a couch, silent and motionless,—­her large eyes fixed on vacancy, her little white hands clasped close together as though in a very extremity of bodily and mental anguish, and the Princesse D’Agramont, who watched her and tended her with the utmost devotion, was often afraid that all her care would be of no avail, and that her patient would slip through her hands into the next world before she had time to even attempt to save her.  And Cyrillon Vergmaud, unhappy and restless, wandered up and down outside the house, where this life, so secretly dear to him, was poised as it were on the verge of death, not daring to enter, or even enquire for news, lest he should hear the worst.

One cold dark afternoon however, as he thus paced to and fro, he saw the Princesse D’Agramont at a window beckoning him, and with a sickening terror at his heart, he obeyed the signal.

“I wish you would come and talk to her!” said the Princesse as she greeted him, with tears in her bright eyes.  “She must be roused from this apathy.  I can do nothing with her.  But I think you might do much if you would!”