es, unable to tear themselves away till all was over. Sometimes an
attendant passed behind them, cleansing the cellar with a hose; floods
of water rushed out with a sluice-like roar, but although the violence
of the discharge actually ate away the surface of the flagstones, it was
powerless to remove the ruddy stains and stench of blood.

Cadine and Marjolin were sure of meeting Claude between four and five in
the afternoon at the wholesale auction of the bullocks' lights. He
was always there amidst the tripe dealers' carts backed up against the
kerb-stones and the blue-bloused, white-aproned men who jostled him and
deafened his ears by their loud bids. But he never felt their elbows; he
stood in a sort of ecstatic trance before the huge hanging lights, and
often told Cadine and Marjolin that there was no finer sight to be seen.
The lights were of a soft rosy hue, gradually deepening and turning at
the lower edges to a rich carmine; and Claude compared them to watered
satin, finding no other term to describe the soft silkiness of those
flowing lengths of flesh which drooped in broad folds like ballet
dancers' skirts. He thought, too, of gauze and lace allowing a glimpse
of pinky skin; and when a ray of sunshine fell upon the lights and
girdled them with gold an expression of languorous rapture came into his
eyes, and he felt happier than if he had been privileged to contemplate
the Greek goddesses in their sovereign nudity, or the chatelaines of
romance in their brocaded robes.

The artist became a great friend of the two young scapegraces. He loved
beautiful animals, and such undoubtedly they were. For a long time he
dreamt of a colossal picture which should represent the loves of Cadine
and Marjolin in the central markets, amidst the vegetables, the fish,
and the meat. He would have depicted them seated on some couch of food,
their arms circling each other's waists, and their lips exchanging an
idyllic kiss. In this conception he saw a manifesto proclaiming the
positivism of art--modern art, experimental and materialistic. And it
seemed to him also that it would be a smart satire on the school which
wishes every painting to embody an "idea," a slap for the old traditions
and all they represented. But during a couple of years he began study
after study without succeeding in giving the particular "note" he
desired. In this way he spoilt fifteen canvases. His failure filled him
with rancour; however, he continued to asso