Note by the Author.—The above, accompanied by a manuscript roll of considerable size, a crumpled, and yellow letter torn in halves, and a number of loose pages covered with peculiar writing (unsigned, though evidently the work of the unhappy artist) lie before me. It is with hesitating and unsteady hands that I separate these silent voices of the past, and gather them at last together into a living though unworthy echo of my own.
I.
"A little more to the light, please—so, that is better." The artist worked rapidly; now and then letting his eyes rest for a moment on his sitter, then returning to the face on the canvas, that was rapidly growing under his hands.
The studio, a small Swiss cottage some distance from the business center of St. Louis, was rather richly, though plainly, furnished. The walls were tinted a neutral gray, an occasional piece of sober-hued drapery hung here and there, while a heavily curtained arch at the back connected with the artist's private apartments beyond.
On the opposite side of the room a door opened to the little entrance hall, and near to this doorway was a carved oaken mantel, above which were grouped together a number of curious weapons, evidently gathered here and there as bric-a-brac, and used, perhaps, now and then, as properties, in the arrangement of some picture.
There was the long-barreled and elaborately ornamented gun of the Arab—the scimitar of the Turk—the blow-gun of the South American Indian—the bow and arrow of his northern brother. At the bottom of this array was a pair of French rapiers of the seventeenth century. The blades were crossed and rested upon a brass-headed nail, and upon this nail there hung, point downward, a jewel-hilted Italian stiletto or dagger, suspended by a silken cord.
The room was lighted by a sky-light and one window—only the light of the former falling upon the sitter—a large Japanese screen diverting all other direct rays. Through the half-open casement a light breath of summer crept in, from the little garden outside, freighted with the mingled odors of sweet-briar and white flowering locust. A yellow butterfly flitted in and out, now and then making a circuit of the room, resting here and there for a moment to fan noiselessly with its bloomy wings. A stray bee buzzed drowsily in, but, finding nothing so attractive as the sweets without, hastily retreated, striking heavily against the window-pane, where it sputtered and fumed for a time, and gladly escaped. Then all was silent in the room save for the light chafing sound made by the artist's brush against the hitherto untouched canvas.
He at the easel was a man of about thirty years—Julian Paul Goetze, a name already ranked high among his profession. His sitter was a woman of perhaps twenty-three. Her figure was somewhat above medium height and perfectly developed. She was clad in a plain, trimly fitting dress of silver gray, with a neat white collar at the throat. Her face was a perfect oval in its contour, her complexion almost childish in its delicacy. Her hair, a silky brown in color, was fastened in a knot at the back of her shapely head, while in front it was a fluffy mass that partially concealed the forehead, and softly shadowed what seemed to the artist to be the sweetest face in all the world. The features were as delicately chiseled as one would expect to find them in a statue of Purity. The eyes were a deep gray, inclining to hazel, and the coloring of the cheek and lips so tender that the artist looked a little despairingly at the tints upon his palette; while through all there pervaded such an expression of absolute innocence and freedom from the world's taint, as to find expression in but the one word, saintliness.