‘The woman promises well,’ said Sandoz, at last; ’but, dash it, there will be a lot of work in all this.’

Claude, with his eyes blazing in front of his picture, made a gesture of confidence.  ’I’ve lots of time from now till the Salon.  One can get through a deal of work in six months.  And perhaps this time I’ll be able to prove that I am not a brute.’

Thereupon he set up a whistle, inwardly pleased at the sketch he had made of Christine’s head, and buoyed up by one of those flashes of hope whence he so often dropped into torturing anguish, like an artist whom passion for nature consumed.

‘Come, no more idling,’ he shouted.  ‘As you’re here, let us set to.’

Sandoz, out of pure friendship, and to save Claude the cost of a model, had offered to pose for the gentleman in the foreground.  In four or five Sundays, the only day of the week on which he was free, the figure would be finished.  He was already donning the velveteen jacket, when a sudden reflection made him stop.

’But, I say, you haven’t really lunched, since you were working when I came in.  Just go down and have a cutlet while I wait here.’

The idea of losing time revolted Claude.  ’I tell you I have breakfasted.  Look at the saucepan.  Besides, you can see there’s a crust of bread left.  I’ll eat it.  Come, to work, to work, lazy-bones.’

And he snatched up his palette and caught his brushes, saying, as he did so, ‘Dubuche is coming to fetch us this evening, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, about five o’clock.’

’Well, that’s all right then.  We’ll go down to dinner directly he comes.  Are you ready?  The hand more to the left, and your head a little more forward.’

Having arranged some cushions, Sandoz settled himself on the couch in the required attitude.  His back was turned, but all the same the conversation continued for another moment, for he had that very morning received a letter from Plassans, the little Provencal town where he and the artist had known each other when they were wearing out their first pairs of trousers on the eighth form of the local college.  However, they left off talking.  The one was working with his mind far away from the world, while the other grew stiff and cramped with the sleepy weariness of protracted immobility.

It was only when Claude was nine years old that a lucky chance had enabled him to leave Paris and return to the little place in Provence, where he had been born.  His mother, a hardworking laundress,* whom his ne’er-do-well father had scandalously deserted, had afterwards married an honest artisan who was madly in love with her.  But in spite of their endeavours, they failed to make both ends meet.  Hence they gladly accepted the offer of an elderly and well-to-do townsman to send the lad to school and keep him with him.  It was the generous freak of an eccentric amateur of painting, who had been struck by the little figures that the urchin had often daubed.  And