One evening, in Christine’s presence, he began swearing, and all at once a cry of fury escaped him:  ’After all, by the thunder of heaven, is it possible to stick one woman’s head on another’s shoulders?  I ought to chop my hand off.’

From the depths of his heart a single idea now rose to his brain:  to obtain her consent to pose for the whole figure.  It had slowly sprouted, first as a simple wish, quickly discarded as absurd; then had come a silent, constantly-renewed debate with himself; and at last, under the spur of necessity, keen and definite desire.  The recollection of the morning after the storm, when she had accepted his hospitality, haunted and tortured him.  It was she whom he needed; she alone could enable him to realise his dream, and he beheld her again in all her youthful freshness, beaming and indispensable.  If he could not get her to pose, he might as well give up his picture, for no one else would ever satisfy him.  At times, while he remained seated for hours, distracted in front of the unfinished canvas, so utterly powerless that he no longer knew where to give a stroke of the brush, he formed heroic resolutions.  The moment she came in he would throw himself at her feet; he would tell her of his distress in such touching words that she would perhaps consent.  But as soon as he beheld her, he lost all courage, he averted his eyes, lest she might decipher his thoughts in his instinctive glances.  Such a request would be madness.  One could not expect such a service from a friend; he would never have the audacity to ask.

Nevertheless, one evening as he was getting ready to accompany her, and as she was putting on her bonnet, with her arms uplifted, they remained for a moment looking into each other’s eyes, he quivering, and she suddenly becoming so grave, so pale, that he felt himself detected.  All along the quays they scarcely spoke; the matter remained unmentioned between them while the sun set in the coppery sky.  Twice afterwards he again read in her looks that she was aware of his all-absorbing thought.  In fact, since he had dreamt about it, she had began to do the same, in spite of herself, her attention roused by his involuntary allusions.  They scarcely affected her at first, though she was obliged at last to notice them; still the question seemed to her to be beyond the range of possibility, to be one of those unavowable ideas which people do not even speak of.  The fear that he would dare to ask her did not even occur to her; she knew him well by now; she could have silenced him with a gesture, before he had stammered the first words, and in spite of his sudden bursts of anger.  It was simple madness.  Never, never!