and Armand—an old savant named Dr. Dean, who is visiting Egypt for the purpose of studying its hieroglyphs and other matters possessing interest for an antiquarian. A knowing fellow is this Doctor, and a fine little character, whose good-humored personality and quiet, shrewd observations present a soothing contrast to the passionate utterances of Murray and Armand, and the dramatic outbursts of Ziska when she scornfully taunts the painter with his vileness.
In conversation with the Doctor, Gervase Armand admits that there is something about Ziska which has struck him as being familiar. "The tone of her voice and the peculiar cadence of her laughter" affect him peculiarly. When he wonders whether he has ever come across her before as a model either in Paris or Rome, the Doctor shakes his head. "Think again," he says. "You are now a man in the prime of life, Monsieur Gervase, but look back to your early youth,—the period when young men do wild, reckless, and often wicked things,—did you ever in that thoughtless time break a woman's heart?"
Armand admits that he may have done so, and the Doctor propounds his theory:
"Suppose that you, in your boyhood, had
