seized hold of him again, he was wearing himself out, oblivious of the
hour, oblivious of the world; he wished to infuse life into his work at
once.

Ah, what a pitiful sight! And with what tear-drenched eyes did Christine
gaze at him! At first she thought of leaving him to that mad work, as a
maniac is left to the pleasures of his craziness. He would never finish
that picture, that was quite certain now. The more desperately he worked
at it, the more incoherent did it become; the colouring had grown heavy
and pasty, the drawing was losing shape and showing signs of effort.
Even the background and the group of labourers, once so substantial
and satisfactory, were getting spoiled; yet he clung to them, he had
obstinately determined to finish everything else before repainting the
central figure, the nude woman, which remained the dread and the desire
of his hours of toil, and which would finish him off whenever he might
again try to invest it with life. For months he had not touched it,
and this had tranquillised Christine and made her tolerant and
compassionate, amid her jealous spite; for as long as he did not return
to that feared and desired mistress, she thought that he betrayed her
less.

Her feet were freezing on the tiles, and she was turning to get into bed
again when a shock brought her back to the door. She had not understood
at first, but now at last she saw. With broad curved strokes of his
brush, full of colour, Claude was at once wildly and caressingly
modelling flesh. He had a fixed grin on his lips, and did not feel
the burning candle-grease falling on his fingers, while with silent,
passionate see-sawing, his right arm alone moved against the wall,
casting black confusion upon it. He was working at the nude woman.

Then Christine opened the door and walked into the studio. An invincible
revolt, the anger of a wife buffeted at home, impelled her forward. Yes,
he was with that other, he was painting her like a visionary, whom wild
craving for truth had brought to the madness of the unreal; and those
limbs were being gilded like the columns of a tabernacle, that trunk was
becoming a star, shimmering with yellow and red, splendid and unnatural.
Such strange nudity--like unto a monstrance gleaming with precious
stones and intended for religious adoration--brought her anger to a
climax. She had suffered too much, she would not tolerate it.

And yet at first she simply showed herself despairing and supplica