near the easel, and
covering the figure with a wet cloth, he said to the model:

"That is enough for to-day."

She rose, picked up awkwardly her clothing, a handful of dark wool and
soiled linen, and went to dress behind the screen.

Meanwhile the sculptor, having dipped in the water of a green bowl his
hands, which the tenacious clay made white, went out of the studio with
Therese.

They passed under the tree which studded the sand of the courtyard with
the shells of its flayed bark. She said:

"You have no more faith, have you?"

He led her to his room.

The letter written from Dinard had already softened his painful
impressions. She had come at the moment when, tired of suffering, he
felt the need of calm and of tenderness. A few lines of handwriting had
appeased his mind, fed on images, less susceptible to things than to the
signs of things; but he felt a pain in his heart.

In the room where everything spoke of her, where the furniture, the
curtains, and the carpets told of their love, she murmured soft words:

"You could believe--do you not know what you are?--it was folly! How can
a woman who has known you care for another after you?"

"But before?"

"Before, I was waiting for you."

"And he did not attend the races at Dinard?"

She did not think he had, and it was very certain she did not attend
them herself. Horses and horsey men bored her.

"Jacques, fear no one, since you are not comparable to any one."

He knew, on the contrary, how insignificant he was and how insignificant
every one is in this world where beings, agitated like grains in a van,
are mixed and separated by a shake of the rustic or of the god. This
idea of the agricultural or mystical van represented measure and order
too well to be exactly applied to life. It seemed to him that men were
grains in a coffee-mill. He had had a vivid sensation of this the day
before, when he saw Madame Fusellier grinding coffee in her mill.

Therese said to him:

"Why are you not conceited?"

She added few words, but she spoke with her eyes, her arms, the breath
that made her bosom rise.

In the happy surprise of seeing and hearing her, he permitted himself to
be convinced.

She asked who had said so odious a thing.

He had no reason to conceal his name from her. It was Daniel Salomon.

She was not surprised. Daniel Salomon, who passed for not having been
the lover of any woman, wished at least to be in the confidence of all
and know