!" she cried out again, and struggled to free herself.
"Monsieur, what are you doing?"

"Wait, I tell you!" he almost shouted.

Frightened before, she was terrified now, and besides she hated the man
with all her strength, and her soul shrank from him because it was he
who had so nearly killed Jean; but she had come to plead with him, she
must not forget that, only--only he was acting so strangely. And then
suddenly, startling her, she remembered that it was he who had said she
was Jean's model. That was why he was staring so wildly first at her
and then at the face of the girl with the drum, and back at her again,
and then at the clay figure.

"It is so!" he said hoarsely. "It is so! But wait--wait!" His hands
dropped from her shoulders, and he ran from one figure to another about
the studio, pausing before each one to gaze at it fixedly and intently.
"The lips--always the lips--always your lips--the wonderful,
inscrutable lips that all France is forever raving about!"--the words
came in sharp, broken snatches. "Never the face in its entirety, but
always the lips--and always with the lips some additional feature, the
forehead, or the poise, or the eyes--always you!"

At first she followed the man with her eyes in a sort of incredulous,
fearsome wonder; and then slowly, seemingly without volition of her
own, drawn to it as by a magnet, she turned to face and stare at the
figure of the "_Fille du Regiment_." Was it true, could it be true
that it was she, her lips that Jean had made there in those lips of
clay? Was that what that strange sense of familiarity had meant, and
which she had not understood? No, no--Jean had forgotten, forgotten
long ago! It was not true, it was not possible! And yet--and yet they
_were_ her lips--her eyes would not lie to her. And this then was what
had seemed to give a significance, that she could not explain at the
time, to those words of Jean's of a little while ago. This man Paul
Valmain had said she was Jean's model before she went upstairs, and
then Jean had talked about the beacon. "It is a beacon--and it is for
you, Marie-Louise, because it is you ... has it not those lips that I
could fashion even in the dark?" he had said. She had not been able to
connect the two things then; but now--now she knew. Jean's model--all
through those two years she had been Jean's model! And yet how could
it be possible! The very thought seemed to leave her abashed--it--it
seemed as