The Sacrificial Altar

He returned through the silent house and out of it as noiselessly as he had come. In the pagoda he tied his shoes properly lest the dragging laces impede his progress or attract attention.

HE GAZED RESENTFULLY AT THAT DIMINISHED BEAUTY.

And then he heard some one coming stealthily up the stair from the street. A policeman, of course! In an instant he had darted through the tradesman’s entrance in the back fence, down a narrow alley, and was peering out into Jones Street. It was deserted.

The fog had rushed in from the Pacific. He encountered no one on his return home. The windows of his own house were still black. He stealthily replaced the chain insisted upon by his servants, then lit the gas in his library and almost flew to his desk. Eight hours later he was still there, and his old servants, weeping and shaking, gave up trying to make him listen. During the next three months, indeed, he might have been isolated on the highest peak of the Sierras.

Louis, after the twenty-four hours of deep recuperative sleep that always followed the finish of a book, awoke to a familiar chorus: the creaking of his eucalyptus-trees, the fog-horn of Sausalito, the measured drip of the fog on his old-fashioned window-panes. But he returned to his personal life with something more than the usual reaction after a long period in the world of imagination; his depression was so great that the divine happiness of the past five months was blotted from his memory.

Then, not slowly, but with frightful abruptness, he understood. It was not that he had forgotten the act of smothering Berthe Dupont while writing under its inspiration, but that realities, himself, were for the time non-existent. Now, in the deep depression of his nerve centers following that long orgy of creation, he felt as if he were falling down through an abyss of horror without hope and without end. And while he experienced no regret for his act, since it had given the world a masterpiece, nor any that he never should see the beautiful girl again, he was filled with an emotional pity for her that surprised himself. But then he was an artist, and he owed her so much!

A moment later and he nearly shrieked aloud. There was a heavy tread on the stair. It was portentously slow and deliberate…Why had he not been suspected before this?…Had M. Cesar used his influence?…He, too, was an artist in his way…He cowered under the bedclothes…The door opened. He heard the rattle of dishes. Seraphine never allowed him to sleep more than twenty-four hours without nourishment.

As he sat up in bed he smiled wanly upon his devoted servitor and smoothed his hair. “Good morning, ma vieille. Or is it afternoon? It is good to return to that rational condition which enables me to appreciate your excellent cooking.”

Seraphine’s gnarled old face grinned. “Ah, Monsieur, it is good to see you no worse. But you are very pale and thin, alas! Although how, then, in the name of all the saints, should you not be?”

Louis poured out the coffee with a steady hand. “Don’t run away,” he commanded. “Tell me the news. How is M. Cesar? And Madame Dupont? And the charming Mademoiselle Berthe? Name of a name! but I have not remembered their existence since the day I began my book.”