"Whoever and whatever you are, whatever terrible thing you've done, I only know that you make me think of—of—Oh, the crown of thorns, the cross—you know what I mean!"
"Some one with a crown of thorns?" said the young man wonderingly. "Who was that?"
Mr. Montagu stared at him incredulously. That any man, no matter how base a criminal, and one, indeed, who had cried out again and again the name of God, should not know the story and the name of God's son, astonished him, for the moment, more than anything yet had done.
"Oh, yes, yes, I remember now," continued the boy. "Yes, that was very, very sad. But I'm selfish and preoccupied with my own dreadful trouble, and that whole history, tragic as it was, was a very happy one compared with mine!"
With a cold shudder, Henry Montagu believed him. He realized that as yet he had done nothing for him. Food and drink had occurred to him, but in the minutes that they had passed together the stranger had grown more virile. He was no longer the incredible figure of wretchedness that had dashed into the room. He was sitting forward in the chair now, his eyes on the portrait.
"Is that your wife?" he asked.
"My—my dead wife," answered Mr. Montagu.
His own eyes reverting again and again to the lacerated wrists, he did not see the changing expressions in his visitor's as they studied the eyes of the portrait; but as the boy now leaped impulsively to his feet he saw in them a fierce gleam that was like the hatred of a maniac. He thrilled with renewed terror as the boy once more sprang to him like an animal, and with a growl in his throat rushed toward the portrait.
"Stop!" he shouted, and the boy almost cringed to a halt in the middle of the floor.
When, after his first chill of horror at the act itself, Henry Montagu realized that the desecration was his own thought, his own impulse carried into fierce determination, he sank weak and dizzy into the chair that the boy had left. But again he mastered his frightened mind and thrust away from it the sinister oppression of omen and coincidence. Unwillingly but helplessly, he was letting into his thoughts the theory that, after he had opened the door instead of before he had opened it, the room had been harboring a maniac. And the theory stabbed him. A mushroom growth of tenderness had germinated in his pity and was growing nearer and nearer to a personal liking for the beautiful, pathetic figure of youth that stood before him, wilted and helpless again, in the center of the room.