doing the best I can, Henry--the very best I can." There was a sweet
foreign blur in her speech, Stefan remembered.

His father paused at the door. "I have shown you your duty, my dear. I am
a minister, and you cannot expect me to condone in my wife habits of
frivolity and idleness which I should be the first to reprimand in my
flock. I expect you to set an example."

"Oh," the woman wailed, "when you married me you loved me as I was--"

With a look of controlled annoyance her husband closed the door. Whether
the memory of his father's words was exact or not, Stefan knew their
effect by heart. The door shut, his mother would begin to cry, quietly at
first, then with deep, catching sobs that seemed to stifle her, so that
she rose and paced the room breathlessly. Then she would hold the boy to
her breast, and slowly the storm would change again to gentle tears. That
day there would be no more painting.

These, his earliest memories, culminated in tragedy. A spring day of
driving rain witnessed the arrival of a gray, plain-faced woman, who
mounted to his mother's room. The house seemed full of mysterious bustle.
Presently he heard moans, and rushed upstairs thinking his mother was
crying and needed him. The gray-haired woman thrust him from the bedroom
door, but he returned again and again, calling his mother, until his
father emerged from the study downstairs, and, seizing him in his cold
grip, pushed him into the sanctum and turned the key upon him.

Much later, a man whom Stefan knew as their doctor entered the room with
his father. A strange new word passed between them, and, in his high-
strung state, impressed the boy's memory. It was "chloroform." The doctor