e days. We brought his bed in here so
that he might be with us. He was never very strong. But he is getting
worse and worse, it's distracting.'

She had a fixed stare in her eyes and spoke in a monotonous tone, and
Sandoz felt frightened when he drew up to the bedside. The child's pale
head seemed to have grown bigger still, so heavy that he could no longer
support it. He lay perfectly still, and one might have thought he was
dead, but for the heavy breathing coming from between his discoloured
lips.

'My poor little Jacques, it's I, your godfather. Won't you say how d'ye
do?'

The child made a fruitless, painful effort to lift his head; his eyelids
parted, showing his white eyeballs, then closed again.

'Have you sent for a doctor?'

Christine shrugged her shoulders.

'Oh! doctors, what do they know?' she answered. 'We sent for one; he
said that there was nothing to be done. Let us hope that it will pass
over again. He is close upon twelve years old now, and maybe he is
growing too fast.'

Sandoz, quite chilled, said nothing for fear of increasing her anxiety,
since she did not seem to realise the gravity of the disease. He walked
about in silence and stopped in front of the picture.

'Ho, ho! it's getting on; it's on the right road this time.'

'It's finished.'

'What! finished?'

And when she told him that the canvas was to be sent to the Salon that
next week, he looked embarrassed, and sat down on the couch, like a man
who wishes to judge the work leisurely. The background, the quays, the
Seine, whence arose the triumphal point of the Cite, still remained in a
sketchy state--masterly, however, but as if the painter had been afraid
of spoiling the Paris of his dream by giving it greater finish. There
was also an excellent group on the left, the lightermen unloading the
sacks of plaster being carefully and powerfully treated. But the boat
full of women in the centre transpierced the picture, as it were, with
a blaze of flesh-tints which were quite out of place; and the brilliancy
and hallucinatory proportions of the large nude figure which Claude had
painted in a fever seemed strangely, disconcertingly false amidst the
reality of all the rest.

Sandoz, silent, fell despair steal over him as he sat in front of that
magnificent failure. But he saw Christine's eyes fixed upon him, and had
sufficient strength of mind to say:

'Astounding!--the woman, astounding!'

At that moment Claude came in, and on s