sleepy abode, the exuberance of youth seethed so strongly within
her, her heart craved so desperately for friendship!

'So I took advantage of my first day out,' she continued. 'And besides,
the weather was so nice this morning after all the dull rain.'

Claude, feeling very happy and standing before her, also confessed
himself, but _he_ had nothing to hide.

'For my part,' said he, 'I dared not think of you any more. You are like
one of the fairies of the story-books, who spring from the floor and
disappear into the walls at the very moment one least expects it; aren't
you now? I said to myself, "It's all over: it was perhaps only in my
fancy that I saw her come to this studio." Yet here you are. Well, I am
pleased at it, very pleased indeed.'

Smiling, but embarrassed, Christine averted her head, pretending to
look around her. But her smile soon died away. The ferocious-looking
paintings which she again beheld, the glaring sketches of the South, the
terrible anatomical accuracy of the studies from the nude, all chilled
her as on the first occasion. She became really afraid again, and she
said gravely, in an altered voice:

'I am disturbing you; I am going.'

'Oh! not at all, not at all,' exclaimed Claude, preventing her from
rising. 'It does me good to have a talk with you, for I was working
myself to death. Oh! that confounded picture; it's killing me as it is.'

Thereupon Christine, lifting her eyes, looked at the large picture, the
canvas that had been turned to the wall on the previous occasion, and
which she had vainly wished to see.

The background--the dark glade pierced by a flood of sunlight--was still
only broadly brushed in. But the two little wrestlers--the fair one and
the dark--almost finished by now, showed clearly in the light. In the
foreground, the gentleman in the velveteen jacket, three times begun
afresh, had now been left in distress. The painter was more particularly
working at the principal figure, the woman lying on the grass. He had
not touched the head again. He was battling with the body, changing his
model every week, so despondent at being unable to satisfy himself
that for a couple of days he had been trying to improve the figure from
imagination, without recourse to nature, although he boasted that he
never invented.

Christine at once recognised herself. Yes, that nude girl sprawling on
the grass, one arm behind her head, smiling with lowered eyelids, was
herself, for she ha