ood of the atelier occupied by Maitland that the discarded lover
hastened, but not to the atelier. The madman wished to prove to himself
that the exhibition of his despair had availed him nothing, and that,
scarcely rid of him, Madame Steno had repaired to the other. What would
it avail him to know it and what would the evidence prove? Had the
Countess concealed those sittings--those convenient sittings--as the
jealous lover had told Dorsenne? The very thought of them caused the
blood to flow in his veins much more feverishly than did the thoughts of
the other meetings. For those he could still doubt, notwithstanding the
anonymous letters, notwithstanding the tete-a-tete on the terrace,
notwithstanding the insolent "Linco," whom she had addressed thus before
him, while of the long intimacies of the studio he was certain. They
maddened him, and, at the same time, by that strange contradiction which
is characteristic of all jealousy, he hungered and thirsted to prove
them.

He alighted from his cab at the corner he had named to his cabman, and
from which point he could watch the Rue Leopardi, in which was his
rival's house. It was a large structure in the Moorish style, built by
the celebrated Spanish artist, Juan Santigosa, who had been obliged to
sell all five years before--house, studio, horses, completed paintings,
sketches begun--in order to pay immense losses at gaming. Florent Chapron
had at the time bought the sort of counterfeit Alhambra, a portion of
which he rented to his brother-in-law. During the few moments that he
stood at the corner, Boleslas Gorka recalled having visited that house
the previous year, while taking, in the company of Madame Steno, Alba,
Maud, and Hafner, one of those walks of which fashionable women are so
fond in Rome as well as in Paris. An irrational instinct had rendered the
painter and his paintings antipathetic to him at their first meeting. Had
he had sufficient cause? Suddenly, on leaning forward in such a manner as
to see without being seen, he perceived a victoria which entered the Rue
Leopardi, and in that victoria the black hat of Mademoiselle Steno and
the light one of her mother. In two minutes more the elegant carriage
drew up at the Moorish structure, which gleamed among the other buildings
in that street, for the most part unfinished, with a sort of insolent,
sumptuousness.

The two ladies alighted and disappeared through the door, which closed
upon them, while the coachma