the size of oaks.  He came thither two days in succession, but on the third Christine took him to the market at Bonnieres to buy some hens.  The next day was also lost; the canvas had dried; then he grew impatient in trying to work at it again, and finally abandoned it altogether.  Throughout the warm weather he thus made but a pretence to work—­barely roughing out little bits of painting, which he laid aside on the first pretext, without an effort at perseverance.  His passion for toil, that fever of former days that had made him rise at daybreak to battle with his rebellious art, seemed to have gone; a reaction of indifference and laziness had set in, and he vegetated delightfully, like one who is recovering from some severe illness.

But Christine lived indeed.  All the latent passion of her nature burst into being.  She was indeed an amorosa, a child of nature and of love.

Thus their days passed by and solitude did not prove irksome to them.  No desire for diversion, of paying or receiving visits, as yet made them look beyond themselves.  Such hours as she did not spend near him, she employed in household cares, turning the house upside down with great cleanings, which Melie executed under her supervision, and falling into fits of reckless activity, which led her to engage in personal combats with the few saucepans in the kitchen.  The garden especially occupied her; provided with pruning shears, careless of the thorns which lacerated her hands, she reaped harvests of roses from the giant rose-bushes; and she gave herself a thorough back-ache in gathering the apricots, which she sold for two hundred francs to some of the Englishmen who scoured the district every year.  She was very proud of her bargain, and seriously talked of living upon the garden produce.  Claude cared less for gardening; he had placed his couch in the large dining-room, transformed into a studio; and he stretched himself upon it, and through the open window watched her sow and plant.  There was profound peace, the certainty that nobody would come, that no ring at the bell would disturb them at any moment of the day.  Claude carried this fear of coming into contact with people so far as to avoid passing Faucheur’s inn, for he dreaded lest he might run against some party of chums from Paris.  Not a soul came, however, throughout the livelong summer.  And every night as they went upstairs, he repeated that, after all, it was deuced lucky.

There was, however, a secret sore in the depths of his happiness.  After their flight from Paris, Sandoz had learnt their address, and had written to ask whether he might go to see Claude, but the latter had not answered the letter, and so coolness had followed, and the old friendship seemed dead.  Christine was grieved at this, for she realised well enough that he had broken off all intercourse with his comrades for her sake.  She constantly reverted to the subject; she did not want to estrange him from his friends, and indeed she insisted that he should invite them.  But, though he promised to set matters right, he did nothing of the kind.  It was all over; what was the use of raking up the past?