rage, tore it into narrow shreds, which he burned in his stove. It was
not sufficient that he should kill that one with a knife-thrust, it must
be annihilated.

Another year went by for Claude in desultory toil. He worked from force
of habit, but finished nothing; he himself saying, with a dolorous
laugh, that he had lost himself, and was trying to find himself again.
In reality, tenacious consciousness of his genius left him a hope which
nothing could destroy, even during his longest crises of despondency. He
suffered like some one damned, for ever rolling the rock which slipped
back and crushed him; but the future remained, with the certainty of one
day seizing that rock in his powerful arms and flinging it upward to the
stars. His friends at last beheld his eyes light up with passion once
more. It was known that he again secluded himself in the Rue Tourlaque.
He who formerly had always been carried beyond the work on which he was
engaged, by some dream of a picture to come, now stood at bay before
that subject of the Cite. It had become his fixed idea--the bar that
closed up his life. And soon he began to speak freely of it again in a
new blaze of enthusiasm, exclaiming, with childish delight, that he had
found his way and that he felt certain of victory.

One day Claude, who, so far, had not opened his door to his friends,
condescended to admit Sandoz. The latter tumbled upon a study with a
deal of dash in it, thrown off without a model, and again admirable in
colour. The subject had remained the same--the Port St. Nicolas on
the left, the swimming-baths on the right, the Seine and Cite in the
background. But Sandoz was amazed at perceiving, instead of the boat
sculled by a waterman, another large skiff taking up the whole centre
of the composition--a skiff occupied by three women. One, in a bathing
costume, was rowing; another sat over the edge with her legs dangling in
the water, her costume partially unfastened, showing her bare shoulder;
while the third stood erect and nude at the prow, so bright in tone that
she seemed effulgent, like the sun.

'Why, what an idea!' muttered Sandoz. 'What are those women doing
there?'

'Why, they are bathing,' Claude quietly answered. 'Don't you see that
they have come out of the swimming-baths? It supplies me with a motive
for the nude; it's a real find, eh? Does it shock you?'

His old friend, who knew him well by now, dreaded lest he should give
him cause for discourage