She was no longer young.  Age had spoilt her figure, and that it was which spoilt his work.  She listened, and staggered in her very grief.  Those sittings, from which she had already suffered so much, were becoming unbearable torture now.  What was this new freak of crushing her with her own girlhood, of fanning her jealousy by filling her with regret for vanished beauty?  She was becoming her own rival, she could no longer look at that old picture of herself without being stung at the heart by hateful envy.  Ah, how heavily had that picture, that study she had sat for long ago, weighed upon her existence!  The whole of her misfortunes sprang from it.  It had changed the current of her existence.  And it had come to life again, it rose from the dead, endowed with greater vitality than herself, to finish killing her, for there was no longer aught but one woman for Claude—­she who was shown reclining on the old canvas, and who now arose and became the upright figure of his new picture.

Then Christine felt herself growing older and older at each successive sitting.  And she experienced the infinite despair which comes upon passionate women when love, like beauty, abandons them.  Was it because of this that Claude no longer cared for her, that he sought refuge in an unnatural passion for his work?  She soon lost all clear perception of things; she fell into a state of utter neglect, going about in a dressing jacket and dirty petticoats, devoid of all coquettish feeling, discouraged by the idea that it was useless for her to continue struggling, since she had become old.

There were occasionally abominable scenes between her and Claude, who this time, however, obstinately stuck to his work and finished his picture, swearing that, come what might, he would send it to the Salon.  He lived on his steps, cleaning up his backgrounds until dark.  At last, thoroughly exhausted, he declared that he would touch the canvas no more; and Sandoz, on coming to see him one day, at four o’clock, did not find him at home.  Christine declared that he had just gone out to take a breath of air on the height of Montmartre.

The breach between Claude and his old friends had gradually widened.  With time the latters’ visits had become brief and far between, for they felt uncomfortable when they found themselves face to face with that disturbing style of painting; and they were more and more upset by the unhinging of a mind which had been the admiration of their youth.  Now all had fled; none excepting Sandoz ever came.  Gagniere had even left Paris, to settle down in one of the two houses he owned at Melun, where he lived frugally upon the proceeds of the other one, after suddenly marrying, to every one’s surprise, an old maid, his music mistress, who played Wagner to him of an evening.  As for Mahoudeau, he alleged work as an excuse for not coming, and indeed he was beginning to earn some money, thanks to a bronze manufacturer, who employed him to touch up his models.  Matters