and wept weaker tears because, like a spoilt child,
he cried for something that he wanted without knowing what it was!

"You talk--you rant--you whimper--you bemoan!" he had flared out
angrily at Bidelot yesterday afternoon. "Well, what is it? Do you
find it a pitiful affair, then, my '_Fille du Regiment_'?"

"Ah, Jean! Ah, no! Ah, no!" old Bidelot had cried. "It is not that!
It is exquisite, it is magnificent, it is superb, it transcends
anything the world has ever seen. It is so great that if only there
were a little something, ah, _mon_ Jean, a little something, it would
be the work of a god and not a man!"

"And that something? What is it?" he had demanded.

And old Bidelot had wrung his hands, and the tears had coursed down his
cheeks.

"I do not know! I do not know!" the famous critic had answered almost
hysterically. "If I knew I would tell you. It is but a touch--but a
touch."

Old Bidelot was emotional--an ass! Old Bidelot was fast approaching
his dotage! Jean shrugged his shoulders wrathfully. It was not true,
of course! It lacked nothing, that face--and yet--and yet that sort of
thing disquieted him, irritated him. It was a masterpiece--and its
only fault was that it had not been made by a god! _Ciel_! Was there
ever anything more absurd than that! Well, in any event, it was to
bring him one hundred and twenty-five thousand francs; and his next
commission, which was for the Government of France, would be for double
that amount. Old Bidelot and his "touch"! For France, when this was
finished, he would do that dream statue, if--_damn_ that dream statue!

Jean snarled again. What was the matter with him! The cursed thing
was always in his mind; but never would it come and appear before him,
lifelike and actual, that bronze figure of the woman, as once it had
done. Instead, it seemed to have faded more and more completely away,
until it was as invisible as the base of the statue which he had never
been able to see at all, and yet at which the passers-by in his dreams
had gazed with the same rapt attention as at the woman's figure--it had
faded until the whole existed simply as an indistinct blur upon the
memory. If he could visualise that figure again, get the detail, he
could supply a base of some sort that would go with it; that would come
simply enough once he got to work. _Would_ it! He had thought until
his brain was sick, for hours on end, trying to imagine a fitting
subjec