At last he was permitted to return to the Alcazar.
Isabella was waiting on the steps, before the door of their apartments.
She had stood there a long, long time.
"Father!" she called.
Coello looked up sadly and gave an answer in the negative by compassionately waving his hand.
The young girl shivered, as if a chill breeze had struck her, and when the artist stood beside her, she gazed enquiringly at him with her dark eyes, which looked larger than ever in the pallid, emaciated face, and said in a low, firm tone: "I want to speak to him.

You will take me to the picture.

I must see it." "He has thrust his maul-stick through it.

Believe me, child, you would have condemned it yourself." "And yet, yet! I must see it," she answered earnestly, "see it with these eyes.

I feel, I know--he is an artist.