’Come, there’s life!  Drive your nightmare away, and let us live, live together.  Isn’t it too stupid, to be we two together, to be growing old already, and to torture ourselves, and fail in every attempt to find happiness?  Oh! the grave will take us soon enough, never fear.  Let’s try to live, and love one another.  Remember Bennecourt!  Listen to my dream.  I should like to be able to take you away to-morrow.  We would go far from this cursed Paris, we would find a quiet spot somewhere, and you would see how pleasant I would make your life; how nice it would be to forget everything together!  Of a morning there are strolls in the sunlight, the breakfast which smells nice, the idle afternoon, the evening spent side by side under the lamp!  And no more worrying about chimeras, nothing but the delight of living!  Doesn’t it suffice that I love you, that I adore you, that I am willing to be your servant, your slave, to exist solely for your pleasures?  Do you hear, I love you, I love you? there is nothing else, and that is enough—­I love you!’

He had freed his hands, and making a gesture of refusal, he said, in a gloomy voice: 

’No, it is not enough!  I won’t go away with you, I won’t be happy, I will paint!’

’And I shall die of it, eh?  And you will die of it, and we shall end by leaving all our blood and all our tears in it!  There’s nothing beyond Art, that is the fierce almighty god who strikes us with his thunder, and whom you honour! he may crush us, since he is the master, and you will still bless his name!’

’Yes, I belong to that god, he may do what he pleases with me.  I should die if I no longer painted, and I prefer to paint and die of it.  Besides, my will is nothing in the matter.  Nothing exists beyond art; let the world burst!’

She drew herself up in a fresh spurt of anger.  Her voice became harsh and passionate again.

’But I—­I am alive, and the women you love are lifeless!  Oh! don’t say no!  I know very well that all those painted women of yours are the only ones you care about!  Before I was yours I had already perceived it.  Then, for a short time you appeared to love me.  It was at that period you told me all that nonsense about your fondness for your creations.  You held such shadows in pity when you were with me; but it didn’t last.  You returned to them, oh! like a maniac returns to his mania.  I, though living, no longer existed for you; it was they, the visions, who again became the only realities of your life.  What I then endured you never knew, for you are wonderfully ignorant of women.  I have lived by your side without your ever understanding me.  Yes, I was jealous of those painted creatures.  When I posed to you, only one idea lent me the courage that I needed.  I wanted to fight them, I hoped to win you back; but you granted me nothing, not even a kiss on my shoulder!  Oh, God! how ashamed I sometimes felt!  What grief I had to force back at finding myself thus disdained and thus betrayed!’