am not a brute.'

Thereupon he set up a whistle, inwardly pleased at the sketch he had
made of Christine's head, and buoyed up by one of those flashes of hope
whence he so often dropped into torturing anguish, like an artist whom
passion for nature consumed.

'Come, no more idling,' he shouted. 'As you're here, let us set to.'

Sandoz, out of pure friendship, and to save Claude the cost of a model,
had offered to pose for the gentleman in the foreground. In four or five
Sundays, the only day of the week on which he was free, the figure would
be finished. He was already donning the velveteen jacket, when a sudden
reflection made him stop.

'But, I say, you haven't really lunched, since you were working when I
came in. Just go down and have a cutlet while I wait here.'

The idea of losing time revolted Claude. 'I tell you I have breakfasted.
Look at the saucepan. Besides, you can see there's a crust of bread
left. I'll eat it. Come, to work, to work, lazy-bones.'

And he snatched up his palette and caught his brushes, saying, as he did
so, 'Dubuche is coming to fetch us this evening, isn't he?'

'Yes, about five o'clock.'

'Well, that's all right then. We'll go down to dinner directly he comes.
Are you ready? The hand more to the left, and your head a little more
forward.'

Having arranged some cushions, Sandoz settled himself on the couch
in the required attitude. His back was turned, but all the same the
conversation continued for another moment, for he had that very morning
received a letter from Plassans, the little Provencal town where he and
the artist had known each other when they were wearing out their first
pairs of trousers on the eighth form of the local college. However, they
left off talking. The one was working with his mind far away from the
world, while the other grew stiff and cramped with the sleepy weariness
of protracted immobility.

It was only when Claude was nine years old that a lucky chance had
enabled him to leave Paris and return to the little place in Provence,
where he had been born. His mother, a hardworking laundress,* whom his
ne'er-do-well father had scandalously deserted, had afterwards married
an honest artisan who was madly in love with her. But in spite of
their endeavours, they failed to make both ends meet. Hence they gladly
accepted the offer of an elderly and well-to-do townsman to send the
lad to school and keep him with him. It was the generous freak of an
eccentric