They scarcely had bread to eat, and the huge shanty, which Christine had shown herself so proud of, on settling in it, became uninhabitable in the winter.  She, once such an active housewife, now dragged herself about the place, without courage even to sweep the floor, and thus everything lapsed into abandonment.  In the disaster little Jacques was sadly weakened by unwholesome and insufficient food, for their meals often consisted of a mere crust, eaten standing.  With their lives thus ill-regulated, uncared for, they were drifting to the filth of the poor who lose even all self-pride.

At the close of another year, Claude, on one of those days of defeat, when he fled from his miscarried picture, met an old acquaintance.  This time he had sworn he would never go home again, and he had been tramping across Paris since noon, as if at his heels he had heard the wan spectre of the big, nude figure of his picture—­ravaged by constant retouching, and always left incomplete—­pursuing him with a passionate craving for birth.  The mist was melting into a yellowish drizzle, befouling the muddy streets.  It was about five o’clock, and he was crossing the Rue Royale like one walking in his sleep, at the risk of being run over, his clothes in rags and mud-bespattered up to his neck, when a brougham suddenly drew up.

‘Claude, eh?  Claude!—­is that how you pass your friends?’

It was Irma Becot who spoke, Irma in a charming grey silk dress, covered with Chantilly lace.  She had hastily let down the window, and she sat smiling, beaming in the frame-work of the carriage door.

‘Where are you going?’

He, staring at her open-mouthed, replied that he was going nowhere.  At which she merrily expressed surprise in a loud voice, looking at him with her saucy eyes.

‘Get in, then; it’s such a long while since we met,’ said she.  ’Get in, or you’ll be knocked down.’

And, in fact, the other drivers were getting impatient, and urging their horses on, amidst a terrible din, so he did as he was bidden, feeling quite dazed; and she drove him away, dripping, with the unmistakable signs of his poverty upon him, in the brougham lined with blue satin, where he sat partly on the lace of her skirt, while the cabdrivers jeered at the elopement before falling into line again.

When Claude came back to the Rue Tourlaque he was in a dazed condition, and for a couple of days remained musing whether after all he might not have taken the wrong course in life.  He seemed so strange that Christine questioned him, whereupon he at first stuttered and stammered, and finally confessed everything.  There was a scene; she wept for a long while, then pardoned him once more, full of infinite indulgence for him.  And, indeed, amidst all her bitter grief there sprang up a hope that he might yet return to her, for if he could deceive her thus he could not care as much as she had imagined for that hateful painted creature who stared down from the big canvas.