npremeditated, corrected the lack of grace of its new and affected
antiquity and archeologic romanticism, and harmonized with the humbleness
of a district made ugly by progress of population.

In fine, notwithstanding its appearance of ruin and its green drapery,
that little house had its charm. Suddenly and instinctively, Therese
discovered in it other harmonies. In the elegant negligence which
extended from the walls covered with vines to the darkened panes of the
studio, and even in the bent tree, the bark of which studded with its
shells the wild grass of the courtyard, she divined the mind of the
master, nonchalant, not skilful in preserving, living in the long
solitude of passionate men. She had in her joy a sort of grief at
observing this careless state in which her lover left things around him.
She found in it a sort of grace and nobility, but also a spirit of
indifference contrary to her own nature, opposite to the interested and
careful mind of the Montessuys. At once she thought that, without
spoiling the pensive softness of that rough corner, she would bring to it
her well-ordered activity; she would have sand thrown in the alley, and
in the angle wherein a little sunlight came she would put the gayety of
flowers. She looked sympathetically at a statue which had come there from
some park, a Flora, lying on the earth, eaten by black moss, her two arms
lying by her sides. She thought of raising her soon, of making of her a
centrepiece for a fountain. Dechartre, who for an hour had been watching
for her coming, joyful, anxious, trembling in his agitated happiness,
descended the steps. In the fresh shade of the vestibule, wherein she
divined confusedly the severe splendor of bronze and marble statues, she
stopped, troubled by the beatings of her heart, which throbbed with all
its might in her chest. He pressed her in his arms and kissed her. She
heard him, through the tumult of her temples, recalling to her the short
delights of the day before. She saw again the lion of the Atlas on the
carpet, and returned to Jacques his kisses with delicious slowness. He
led her, by a wooden stairway, into the vast hall which had served
formerly as a workshop, where he designed and modelled his figures, and,
above all, read; he liked reading as if it were opium.

Pale-tinted Gothic tapestries, which let one perceive in a marvellous
forest a lady at the feet of whom a unicorn lay on the grass, extended
above cabinets to the pai