If a gang of assassins had held a murdered man up to his window, a minute or two before, they could scarcely have made so complete a get-away in so short a time. The shutters on the window below were closed and locked. There was nothing to climb up by. And except for the feeling that he had heard something in his dream, the painter was sure that not a sound had reached him from outside the building.
The dog ran back and forth between the artist and the stairway. Animals have remarkable leadings, and the painter thought seriously of making the round of the garden. But it seemed to him, as he thought it over, that such a procedure would be useless at best, and that at worst it would be courting trouble. If bandits were about, what could one timid citizen, armed with an old revolver that had never been fired in its life, do against them? All that could be expected of him, certainly, was to watch from inside his house till morning. He closed his window, and ordered the dog back to his cushion.
Just before he drew the window down, he had had the impression that he heard steps run rapidly along the stone pavement that lay just below it. He raised it again, and looked down. No one was in sight, and not a sound was to be heard. He stood by the window; struggling to get a grip on himself. He wondered if he could be ill. He knew that various delusions come from physical causes within the one who experiences them. He had tried so desperately hard to visualize the head which he needed for his picture, that his effort, combined with the effect of the heavy Falerno wine he had drunk, might easily have produced a psychic effect which caused him to see visions and hear sounds that had transpired only in his imagination. He had almost convinced himself that he had found the key to the enigma, when his glance fell on his dog, obediently crouching on his cushion, but still wide-eyed and excited. It seemed to him exactly as if someone spoke out from right behind him: "But what about the dog? Does your psychopathic theory explain the way the dog is acting?"
Suddenly the painter's mood of anxiety and puzzlement gave way to one of impatience. He was tired and nervous. He was disgusted with the whole annoying affair. He dropped on his bed again, and in a mood of something like defiance, he flung off the perplexity and dropped into a heavy sleep.
Nothing happened till morning. When the bright sun shone into the window instead of the ghostly moon, he was ready to laugh the whole matter off as a half-tipsy dream, and to class the dog's strange conduct with various other evidences of unaccountable nervousness which that animal had shown at various times. He sat down at his easel and went seriously to work at his new sketch. He discovered that lie knew the bearded face now, feature by feature, and the task went smoothly. It was marvelous how vividly the face and form of the heavy fellow came out under the artist's eager fingers. This would be his best picture, he was sure of that.
As he was working, he heard somebody knock at the door downstairs. He made a few rapid strokes still, hastily kicked off his slippers and pulled on his shoes, and went down. It was doubtless the peasant woman, he thought, who brought him his milk every morning, but who brought it at the most unaccountably irregular hours. If she wasn't willing to follow a fairly even schedule, there was no reason why he should discommode himself to keep her from waiting a minute or two.
