And Claude?  Startled, full of gratitude, he had at last found again the sudden vision that he had so often evoked.  But he himself did not speak; he began to paint in the deep solemn silence that had fallen upon them both.  For two long hours he stood to his work with such manly energy that he finished right off a superb roughing out of the whole figure.  Never before had he felt such enthusiasm in his art.  It seemed to him as if he were in the presence of some saint; and at times he wondered at the transfiguration of Christine’s face, whose somewhat massive jaws seemed to have receded beneath the gentle placidity which her brow and cheeks displayed.  During those two hours she did not stir, she did not speak, but from time to time she opened her clear eyes, fixing them on some vague, distant point, and remaining thus for a moment, then closing them again, and relapsing into the lifelessness of fine marble, with the mysterious fixed smile required by the pose.

It was by a gesture that Claude apprized her he had finished.  He turned away, and when they stood face to face again, she ready to depart, they gazed at one another, overcome by emotion which still prevented them from speaking.  Was it sadness, then, unconscious, unnameable sadness?  For their eyes filled with tears, as if they had just spoilt their lives and dived to the depths of human misery.  Then, moved and grieved, unable to find a word, even of thanks, he kissed her religiously upon the brow.

V

ON the 15th May, a Friday, Claude, who had returned at three o’clock in the morning from Sandoz’s, was still asleep at nine, when Madame Joseph brought him up a large bouquet of white lilac which a commissionaire had just left downstairs.  He understood at once.  Christine had wished to be beforehand in celebrating the success of his painting.  For this was a great day for him, the opening day of the ‘Salon of the Rejected,’ which was first instituted that year,* and at which his picture—­refused by the hanging committee of the official Salon—­was to be exhibited.

  * This was in 1863.—­ED.

That delicate attention on Christine’s part, that fresh and fragrant lilac, affected him greatly, as if presaging a happy day.  Still in his nightshirt, with his feet bare, he placed the flowers in his water-jug on the table.  Then, with his eyes still swollen with sleep, almost bewildered, he dressed, scolding himself the while for having slept so long.  On the previous night he had promised Dubuche and Sandoz to call for them at the latter’s place at eight o’clock, in order that they might all three go together to the Palais de l’Industrie, where they would find the rest of the band.  And he was already an hour behind time.