He spoke of his projected task in as cool a tone as a scientist might use in speaking of the dissection of a dog.
"You see," he continued, laying down the claw, "this is the age of realism. Nothing is now accepted in literature, art, or the drama that does not bear on its front the stamp of reality. Art, if it is to hold the mirror up to Nature, must not shrink any more than medical science from experimenting on the living frame, and analysing with delicate eye its varying phases of agony."
He paused for a moment, and then, with the air of a man arriving at the end of a set oration, he said:
"You now have my secret. Know, then, how I intend to produce on that canvas the dying agonies of Modestus the martyr—the picture destined to create an epoch in the history of modern art. So soon as the church-bells chime the hour of midnight you are dead. Such is Daphne's wish."
"Daphne's!" I ejaculated.
"Ay! She wishes for your death. She has promised to marry me to-night. Did you not know?"
He spoke in so natural a tone that I could but stare fixedly at him, wondering what his motive could be in fabricating so wild a statement. My look of perplexity was so great that the artist laughed aloud. This was the first time his facial muscles had relaxed. The transition from rigidity to mobility was not an agreeable one.
A terrible metamorphosis was coming over the artist. It seemed as if some part of his nature, that he had long kept hidden, was rising up to the surface. It did arise—fast. It revealed itself in his unearthly laugh, in the distortion of his mouth, in the wild light of his eyes, in the goblin attitude he had suddenly assumed with his head sunk forward on his breast and his crooked fingers clawing at the air.
