’Come along, I promised my mother to be back for dinner.  You’ll take a bit with us.  It will be nice; we’ll finish the day together.’

They both went down the quay, past the Tuileries, walking side by side in fraternal fashion.  But at the Pont des Saints-Peres the painter stopped short.

‘What, are you going to leave me?’ exclaimed Sandoz.

‘Why, I thought you were going to dine with me?’

‘No, thanks; I’ve too bad a headache—­I’m going home to bed.’

And he obstinately clung to this excuse.

‘All right, old man,’ said Sandoz at last, with a smile.  ’One doesn’t see much of you nowadays.  You live in mystery.  Go on, old boy, I don’t want to be in your way.’

Claude restrained a gesture of impatience; and, letting his friend cross the bridge, he went his way along the quays by himself.  He walked on with his arms hanging beside him, with his face turned towards the ground, seeing nothing, but taking long strides like a somnambulist who is guided by instinct.  On the Quai de Bourbon, in front of his door, he looked up, full of surprise on seeing a cab waiting at the edge of the foot pavement, and barring his way.  And it was with the same automatical step that he entered the doorkeeper’s room to take his key.

‘I have given it to that lady,’ called Madame Joseph from the back of the room.  ‘She is upstairs.’

‘What lady?’ he asked in bewilderment.

’That young person.  Come, you know very well, the one who always comes.’

He had not the remotest idea whom she meant.  Still, in his utter confusion of mind, he decided to go upstairs.  The key was in the door, which he slowly opened and closed again.

For a moment Claude stood stock still.  Darkness had invaded the studio; a violet dimness, a melancholy gloom fell from the large window, enveloping everything.  He could no longer plainly distinguish either the floor, or the furniture, or the sketches; everything that was lying about seemed to be melting in the stagnant waters of a pool.  But on the edge of the couch there loomed a dark figure, stiff with waiting, anxious and despairing amid the last gasp of daylight.  It was Christine; he recognised her.

She held out her hands, and murmured in a low, halting voice: 

’I have been here for three hours; yes, for three hours, all alone, and listening.  I took a cab on leaving there, and I only wanted to stay a minute, and get back as soon as possible.  But I should have stayed all night; I could not go away without shaking hands with you.’

She continued, and told him of her mad desire to see the picture; her prank of going to the Salon, and how she had tumbled into it amidst the storm of laughter, amidst the jeers of all those people.  It was she whom they had hissed like that; it was on herself that they had spat.  And seized with wild terror, distracted with grief and shame, she had fled, as if she could feel that laughter lashing her like a whip, until the blood flowed.  But she now forgot about herself in her concern for him, upset by the thought of the grief he must feel, for her womanly sensibility magnified the bitterness of the repulse, and she was eager to console.