Then, in the emotion caused him by her infinite passion and grief, he yielded.  He pressed her to him, sobbing and stammering: 

’It is true I had that frightful thought—­I should have done it, and I only resisted on thinking of that unfinished picture.  But can I still live if work will have nothing more to do with me?  How can I live after that, after what’s there, what I spoilt just now?’

‘I will love you, and you will live.’

’Ah! you will never love me enough—­I know myself.  Something which does not exist would be necessary—­something which would make me forget everything.  You were already unable to change me.  You cannot accomplish a miracle!’

Then, as she protested and kissed him passionately, he went on:  ’Well, yes, save me!  Yes, save me, if you don’t want me to kill myself!  Lull me, annihilate me, so that I may become your thing, slave enough, small enough to dwell under your feet, in your slippers.  Ah! to live only on your perfume, to obey you like a dog, to eat and sleep—­if I could, if I only could!’

She raised a cry of victory:  ’At last you are mine!  There is only I left, the other is quite dead!’

And she dragged him from the execrated painting, she carried him off triumphantly.  The candle, now nearly consumed, flared up for a minute behind them on the steps, before the big painting, and then went out.  It was victory, yes, but could it last?

Daylight was about to break, and Christine lay asleep beside Claude.  She was breathing softly, and a smile played upon her lips.  He had closed his eyes; and yet, despite himself, he opened them afresh and gazed into the darkness.  Sleep fled from him, and confused ideas again ascended to his brain.  As the dawn appeared, yellowishly dirty, like a splash of liquid mud on the window-panes, he started, fancying that he heard a loud voice calling to him from the far end of the studio.  Then, irresistibly, despite a few brief hours’ forgetfulness, all his old thoughts returned, overflowing and torturing him, hollowing his cheeks and contracting his jaws in the disgust he felt for mankind.  Two wrinkles imparted intense bitterness to the expression of his face, which looked like the wasted countenance of an old man.  And suddenly the loud voice from the far end of the studio imperiously summoned him a second time.  Then he quite made up his mind:  it was all over, he suffered too much, he could no longer live, since everything was a lie, since there was nothing left upon earth.  Love! what was it?  Nought but a passing illusion.  This thought at last mastered him, possessed him entirely; and soon the craving for nothingness as his only refuge came on him stronger than ever.  At first he let Christine’s head slip down from his shoulder on which it rested.  And then, as a third summons rang out in his mind, he rose and went to the studio, saying: 

‘Yes, yes, I’m coming,’