enough that she is short and not at all such as I
thought of, and so I should perhaps have to change everything once more;
but all the same it might be possible to make her do. Decidedly, I'll
try her--'

He stopped short. The glowing eyes with which he gazed at her clearly
said: 'Ah! there's you! ah! it would be the hoped-for miracle, and
triumph would be certain, if you were to make this supreme sacrifice
for me. I beseech you, I ask you devoutly, as a friend, the dearest, the
most beauteous, the most pure.'

She, erect, looking very pale, seemed to hear each of those words,
though all remained unspoken, and his ardently beseeching eyes overcame
her. She herself did not speak. She simply did as she was desired,
acting almost like one in a dream. Beneath it all there lurked the
thought that he must not ask elsewhere, for she was now conscious of
her earlier jealous disquietude and wished to share his affections with
none. Yet it was in silence and all chastity that she stretched herself
on the couch, and took up the pose, with one arm under her head, her
eyes closed.

And Claude? Startled, full of gratitude, he had at last found again the
sudden vision that he had so often evoked. But he himself did not speak;
he began to paint in the deep solemn silence that had fallen upon them
both. For two long hours he stood to his work with such manly energy
that he finished right off a superb roughing out of the whole figure.
Never before had he felt such enthusiasm in his art. It seemed to him
as if he were in the presence of some saint; and at times he wondered
at the transfiguration of Christine's face, whose somewhat massive jaws
seemed to have receded beneath the gentle placidity which her brow and
cheeks displayed. During those two hours she did not stir, she did not
speak, but from time to time she opened her clear eyes, fixing them on
some vague, distant point, and remaining thus for a moment, then closing
them again, and relapsing into the lifelessness of fine marble, with the
mysterious fixed smile required by the pose.

It was by a gesture that Claude apprized her he had finished. He turned
away, and when they stood face to face again, she ready to depart, they
gazed at one another, overcome by emotion which still prevented them
from speaking. Was it sadness, then, unconscious, unnameable sadness?
For their eyes filled with tears, as if they had just spoilt their lives
and dived to the depths of human misery. The