e himself by placing a flower in the midst of
my curls with far greater skill than any one of our milliners. So much
experience in a man was alarming, wasn't it? I ought to have distrusted
him. Well, you will see. Listen.

[Illustration: p151-162]

We returned from our honeymoon. While I was busy settling myself in my
pretty and charmingly furnished rooms, that paradise you know so well,
my husband, from the moment of his arrival, had set to work and spent
the days at his studio, which was away from the house. When he returned
in the evening, he would talk to me with feverish eagerness of his next
subject for exhibition.

[Illustration: p152-163]

The subject was "a Roman lady leaving the bath." He wanted the marble
to reproduce that faint shiver of the skin at the contact of air, the
moisture of the delicate textures clinging to the shoulders, and all
sorts of other fine things which I no longer remember. Between you and
me, when he speaks to me of his sculpture, I do-not always understand
him very well. However, I used to say confidently: "It will be very
pretty," and already I saw myself treading the finely sanded walks
admiring my husband's work, a beautiful marble sculpture gleaming white
against the green hangings; while behind me I heard whispered: "the wife
of the sculptor."

[Illustration: p153-164]

At last one day, curious to see how our Roman lady was getting on, the
idea occurred to me, to go and take him by surprise in his studio, which
I had not yet visited. It was one of the first times I had gone out
alone, and I had made myself very smart, I can tell you. When I arrived,
I found the door of the little garden leading to the ground floor, wide
open. So I walked straight in; and, conceive my indignation, when I
beheld my husband in a white smock like a stone mason, with ruffled
hair, hands grimed with clay, and in front of him, upright on a
platform, a woman, my dear, a great creature, almost undressed,
and looking just as composed in this airy costume as though it were
perfectly natural.

[Illustration: p154-165]

Her wretched clothes covered with mud, thick walking boots, and a round
hat trimmed with a feather out of curl, were thrown beside her on a
chair. All this I saw in an instant, for you may imagine how I fled.
Etienne would have spoken to me--detained me; but with a gesture of
horror at the clay-covered hands, I rushed off to mama, and reached her
barely alive. You can imagine my appe