But this--this power that compelled was supreme.

While it gripped him he was not his own master.

He was, as he himself had said, a slave.
And while he worked at its behest, watching the wonderful thing that inspiration was weaving by his hand, scarcely conscious of effort, though the perspiration was streaming down his face, he whispered over and over between his clenched teeth the title of the picture that was to astonish the world--"The Goddess Veiled in Foam." There was no foam as yet on the pool, but he remembered how two nights before he had seen the breaking of the first wave that had turned it into a seething cauldron of surf.

That was what he wanted now--just the first great wave washing over her exquisite feet and flinging its garment of spray like a flimsy veil over her perfect form.

He wanted that as he wanted nothing else on earth.