e quays again, he thought of going
home to see whether his picture was really so very bad. But the mere
idea made him tremble all over. His studio seemed a chamber of horrors,
where he could no more continue to live, as if, indeed, he had left the
corpse of some beloved being there. No, no; to climb the three flights
of stairs, to open the door, to shut himself up face to face with
'that,' would have needed strength beyond his courage. So he crossed
the Seine and went along the Rue St. Jacques. He felt too wretched and
lonely; and, come what might, he would go to the Rue d'Enfer to turn
Sandoz from his work.

Sandoz's little fourth-floor flat consisted of a dining-room, a bedroom,
and a strip of kitchen. It was tenanted by himself alone; his mother,
disabled by paralysis, occupied on the other side of the landing a
single room, where she lived in morose and voluntary solitude. The
street was a deserted one; the windows of the rooms overlooked the
gardens of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, above which rose the rounded crest
of a lofty tree, and the square tower of St. Jacques-du-Haut-Pas.

Claude found Sandoz in his room, bending over his table, busy with a
page of 'copy.'

'I am disturbing you?' said Claude.

'Not at all. I have been working ever since morning, and I've had enough
of it. I've been killing myself for the last hour over a sentence that
reads anyhow, and which has worried me all through my lunch.'

The painter made a gesture of despair, and the other, seeing him so
gloomy, at once understood matters.

'You don't get on either, eh? Well, let's go out. A sharp walk will take
a little of the rust off us. Shall we go?'

As he was passing the kitchen, however, an old woman stopped him. It was
his charwoman, who, as a rule, came only for two hours in the morning
and two hours in the evening. On Thursdays, however, she remained the
whole afternoon in order to look after the dinner.

'Then it's decided, monsieur?' she asked. 'It's to be a piece of skate
and a leg of mutton, with potatoes.'

'Yes, if you like.'

'For how many am I to lay the cloth?'

'Oh! as for that, one never knows. Lay for five, at any rate; we'll see
afterwards. Dinner at seven, eh? we'll try to be home by then.'

When they were on the landing, Sandoz, leaving Claude to wait for
him, stole into his mother's room. When he came out again, in the same
discreet affectionate manner, they both went downstairs in silence.
Outside, having snif