Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 4 — page 132: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

638 a hurdy-gurdy, and then the low, rapid, ex- cited voice. ‘Thank God he’s not been here,” she was saying. ‘“ But he’s coming! What’s the matter with you? How strange you look!” There was a moment’s pause, then the girl’s voice stumbled on: “ It’s awful! He mastered his jealousy until this afternoon. When he came home I thought he had fought it out with himself and was trying to forget. Then he saw your painting. It was that turned him into a snarling brute! ' Why did you ever paint such a horrible thing? It might be the cause of your death—your own ‘work of art,’ as they call it. What irony!” Duane could hear the heavy breathing in curious syncopation with his heart beats and the hurdy-gurdy. ‘“‘But den’t be so terror-stricken, poor dear old boy,” he heard the girl’s voice again. ‘‘ Come here!”’ Duane looked through the curtains. The artist was standing, waiting with his arms hanging so that the veins of his beautiful hands filled with blood. His face was ashen, his jaw set, but the soft womanlike lips parted. “For God’s sake, don’t say any more!” he whimpered through his teeth. ‘“My poor boy!” the woman went on, “I’ve frightened him. Come here and let me kiss you!” Duane moved back. For a moment he felt as if a cold blade had passed slowly into him. A chill struck him in the pit of his stomach and then crept up to his’ heart. He clutched the velvet arras about his face so that the world could not see him. There were sentences, even the move- ment of chairs, to which he was partially deaf, as he was deaf to the long silence. His chill thawed to a curious, empty rage. He had had a great passion—a great de- sire—but the cause of it had suddenly ceased to exist. He had wanted to protect a woman from a beast. That was a great primitive yearning which when it melted into a formless complex of rage and self- pity left him inactive, grasping for motives, feeling suddenly that his real passion had Dic g itiz ry Go ogle ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. been merely a dream. It was a grim delu- sion. The picture of the cave-man seemed a mockery, a stretch of smirched paper. Following his first impulse to kill them both, he stepped out in front of the cur- tain. Both the wife and the lover could see a ripple of uncertainty pass over the dark face. As he held up the revolver, Duane hung in the balance of two person- alities; the tall, elegant, well-tailored, well- "manicured aristocrat and the bestial primal man. The cave-man would murder both; the aristocrat would turn to man-made law. _ In a moment the conflict was over. He had fought against law, against men, against the centuries; but now—he spoke to them in his cultured accents: ‘“‘ Now the problem is easily settled. How abhorrent this cave-business would be on plush car- pets and by the light of lace curtains and filigreed lamps!” ‘For God’s sake finish it!” Chantry cried piteously. ‘‘ Don’t stand there and play with me any longer!” . ‘“‘Oh, yes, this thing,” Duane found himself still holding the revolver; “I couldn’t think of using it. I couldn’t af- ford to use it—a man in my position.” He put it away in his hip-pocket carefully so that the grease would not smirch his , coat. “As I was saying, ‘the problem is set- tled. The woman in the cave needs no protection: in this case she is not mine.’ They saw how his passion had smoldered into a gray tranquility so that his sentences became crushingly logical and passionless: ‘Most men think that if their wives wrong them they must, kill somebody about it! Could anything be more ridiculous?’ Why should I risk imprisonment—disgrace—for this woman? New York can settle this af- fair, and so can civilization. The modern man can settle it very conclusively and— and comfortably.” He walked across the carpet and past the jeweled Jantern which for an instant threw a halo of light on his thin hair. They heard him close the door softly and walk out. It was as if he had walked out of a jungle cave onto the well-paved sidewalk of Fifth Avenue. . Origin: 1EDOO