Montparnasse sat silently in the darkening room, his own shallow breath hardly breaking the stillness. Even as night crept toward the window, lowering into shadow his apartment, he made no move to light the thin candle in his limp fist. He sat with his back pressed against the wall, one leg straight out, his arm resting upon the crooked knee of the other, head back and turned away from the object covered by a burlap cloth, leaned against the far wall. His eyes remained unfocused, misery etched into every feature of his face.
His own good looks were apparent even in the half-light, his well-shaped nose casting an artistic shadow across half of his face, only his strong cheekbone catching the dim light of the streetlamp outside, a black eye glittering in the darkness above. His ebony hair seemed arranged by a sculptor, though its curls simply lay where they had fallen when he had jerked his gaze away from the object on the far wall. His pale brow beneath was gathered in thought.
A timid breeze felt its way into the room, gently ruffling the coarse burlap cloth. Montparnasse started as one awakened by a nightmare.
He cautiously turned his head toward the fluttering cloth, the course burlap flapping at him like a beckoning finger. Montparnasse dropped the candle, which, unobserved, rolled across the uneven wooden floor, stopped at last by the dagger still warm with the same fresh blood that stained Montparnasse's cuffs, smeared over his elegant white fingers. These two objects were all that bore witness to the strange events that followed.
Montparnasse crept across the room, any brush of his movement hidden beneath the constant, urgent rustling of the cloth, which now danced in the light breeze as though it were possessed.
By the look on Montparnasse's face, terror of the thing under the cloth and, even more, of the way he continued to move toward it, one would think that the room did contain an evil spirit. Perhaps it did.
Trembling, Montparnasse's pale hand moved through the patch of dim light from the window, casting an ominous shadow over the burlap, and seized the corner of the writhing cloth. The breeze died at once; the room was still.
The cloth hung limply from Montparnasse's bloodstained fingers, and he paused, hesitating, until the stillness of the room became oppressive.
Silence.
Then Montparnasse wrenched the cloth away from the wall, his frantic heartbeat drowning the rush of burlap against canvas, and beheld the portrait underneath.
Yes, it had changed again. A wicked glint filled the shadowed eyes of his likeness; the cherry lips were twisted into a sneer; the white glove resting upon its heart was seeped with crimson.
And then there was the neck.
The portrait showed a handprint, long purple bruises, each crowned by the scar of a fingernail mark, spanning his likeness's throat. The jaw above was clenched biting back indignation.
Montparnasse clenched his own jaw, not from indignation but to choke a cry, his hand at his unmarred neck. How she had fought him, resisted the Death he had brought her! Yet no matter how hard she had clawed at his neck, her nails could not pierce his flesh. His windpipe would not close; his skin would not bruise.
But here was his portrait, here was her handprint. And as Montparnasse vigorously scrubbed her blood from his hands, the red stains on the portrait's glove grew brighter.