mot.

"Adieu, cher maitre," he said, rising to shake his visitor's hand
across the wide desk.

Rufin seemed to have trodden into a groove of unsuccess. All his
efforts were futile; he saw himself wasting time and energy while
fate wasted none. The picture came to hang in his studio till the
Luxembourg should demand it; daily its tragic wisdom and tenacious
femininity goaded him to new endeavors, and daily he knew that he
spent himself in vain.

He did not even realize how much of himself he had expended till that
raw morning before the dawn when he drove across Paris in a damp and
mournful cab, with the silent girl at his side, to a little square
like a well shut in by high houses whose every window was lighted.
There was already a crowd waiting massed under the care of mounted
soldiers, and the cab slowed to a walk to pass through them. From the
window at his side he saw, with unconscious appreciation, the picture
it made, an arrangement of somber masses with yellow windows shining,
and in the middle the gaunt uprights, the severe simplicity of the
guillotine.

Faces looked in at him, strange and sudden, lit abruptly by the
carriage-lamps. Somebody--doubtless a student--peered and recognized
him. "Good morning, maitre," he said, and was gone. Maitre--master!
Men did him honor in so naming him, gave him rank, deferred to him.
But he acknowledged life for his master, himself for its pupil and
servant.

The girl had not spoken since they started; she remained sitting
still in her place when the cab halted at a door, and it needed his
hand on her arm to rouse her to dismount. She followed him obediently
between more men in uniform, and they found themselves in a corridor,
where an officer, obviously waiting there for the purpose, greeted
Rufin with marked deference.

"There is no need," he said, as Rufin groped in his pockets for the
permit with which he had been provided. "I have been warned to expect
Monsieur Rufin and the lady, and I congratulate myself on the honor
of receiving them."

"He knows we are coming?" asked Rufin.

"Yes, he knows," replied the other. "At this moment his toilet is
being made." He sank his voice so that the mute, abstracted girl
should not overhear. "The hair above the neck, you know--they always
shave that off. It might be better that mademoiselle should not see."

"Possibly," agreed Rufin, looking absently at his comely,
insignificant face, which the lamps illuminated mercilessl