lves, there remained naught of the nude, headless,
breastless woman but a mutilated trunk, a vague cadaverous stump, an
indistinct, lifeless patch of visionary flesh.

Sandoz and Dubuche were already descending the stairs with a great
clatter, and Claude followed them, fleeing his work, in agony at having
to leave it thus scarred with a gaping gash.

III

THE beginning of the week proved disastrous to Claude. He had relapsed
into one of those periods of self-doubt that made him hate painting,
with the hatred of a lover betrayed, who overwhelms the faithless one
with insults although tortured by an uncontrollable desire to worship
her yet again. So on the Thursday, after three frightful days of
fruitless and solitary battling, he left home as early as eight in
the morning, banging his door violently, and feeling so disgusted with
himself that he swore he would never take up a brush again. When he was
unhinged by one of these attacks there was but one remedy, he had to
forget himself, and, to do so, it was needful that he should look up
some comrades with whom to quarrel, and, above all, walk about and
trudge across Paris, until the heat and odour of battle rising from her
paving-stones put heart into him again.

That day, like every other Thursday, he was to dine at Sandoz's, in
company with their friends. But what was he to do until the evening? The
idea of remaining by himself, of eating his heart out, disgusted him.
He would have gone straight to his friend, only he knew that the latter
must be at his office. Then the thought of Dubuche occurred to him, but
he hesitated, for their old friendship had lately been cooling down.
He felt that the fraternity of the earlier times of effort no longer
existed between them. He guessed that Dubuche lacked intelligence, had
become covertly hostile, and was occupied with ambitions different from
his own. However, he, Claude, must go somewhere. So he made up his mind,
and repaired to the Rue Jacob, where the architect rented a small room
on the sixth floor of a big frigid-looking house.

Claude was already on the landing of the second floor, when the
doorkeeper, calling him back, snappishly told him that M. Dubuche was
not at home, and had, in fact, stayed out all night. The young man
slowly descended the stairs and found himself in the street, stupefied,
as it were, by so prodigious an event as an escapade on the part of
Dubuche. It was a piece of inconceivable bad luck