u are,' replied Jory, in a burst of exalted conviction.
'That's what I call success. Does it matter a curse if they laugh? We
have made our mark; to-morrow every paper will talk about us.'

'The idiots,' was all that Sandoz could gasp, choking with grief.

Fagerolles, disinterested and dignified like a family friend following
a funeral procession, said nothing. Irma alone remained gay, thinking
it all very funny. And, with a caressing gesture, she leant against the
shoulder of the derided painter, and whispered softly in his ear: 'Don't
fret, my boy. It's all humbug, be merry all the same.'

But Claude did not stir. An icy chill had come over him. For a
moment his heart had almost ceased to beat, so cruel had been the
disappointment And with his eyes enlarged, attracted and fixed by
a resistless force, he looked at his picture. He was surprised, and
scarcely recognised it; it certainly was not such as it had seemed to be
in his studio. It had grown yellow beneath the livid light of the linen
screens; it seemed, moreover, to have become smaller; coarser and more
laboured also; and whether it was the effect of the light in which it
now hung, or the contrast of the works beside it, at all events he now
at the first glance saw all its defects, after having remained blind
to them, as it were, for months. With a few strokes of the brush he, in
thought, altered the whole of it, deepened the distances, set a badly
drawn limb right, and modified a tone. Decidedly, the gentleman in the
velveteen jacket was worth nothing at all, he was altogether pasty and
badly seated; the only really good bit of work about him was his hand.
In the background the two little wrestlers--the fair and the dark
one--had remained too sketchy, and lacked substance; they were amusing
only to an artist's eye. But he was pleased with the trees, with the
sunny glade; and the nude woman--the woman lying on the grass appeared
to him superior to his own powers, as if some one else had painted her,
and as if he had never yet beheld her in such resplendency of life.

He turned to Sandoz, and said simply:

'They do right to laugh; it's incomplete. Never mind, the woman is all
right! Bongrand was not hoaxing me.'

His friend wished to take him away, but he became obstinate, and drew
nearer instead. Now that he had judged his work, he listened and looked
at the crowd. The explosion continued--culminated in an ascending scale
of mad laughter. No sooner had visi