nd if I lose my sleep and no longer eat?"

"Let me know of it."

"And then?"

"I will allow you to recover yourself in peace."

"A thousand thanks!"

And on the theme of this uncertain love they spun theories and fancies
all the afternoon. The same thing occurred on several successive days.
Accepting his statement as a sort of jest, of no real importance, she
would say gaily on entering: "Well, how goes your love to-day?"

He would reply lightly, yet with perfect seriousness, telling her of the
progress of his malady, in all its intimate details, and of the depth of
the tenderness that had been born and was daily increasing. He analyzed
himself minutely before her, hour by hour, since their separation the
evening before, with the air of a professor giving a lecture; and she
listened with interest, a little moved, and somewhat disturbed by this
story which seemed that in a book of which she was the heroine. When
he had enumerated, in his gallant and easy manner, all the anxieties of
which he had become the prey, his voice sometimes trembled in expressing
by a word, or only by an intonation, the tender aching of his heart.

And she persisted in questioning him, vibrating with curiosity, her eyes
fixed upon him, her ear eager for those things that are disturbing to
know but charming to hear.

Sometimes when he approached her to alter a pose he would seize her
hand and try to kiss it. With a swift movement she would draw away her
fingers from his lips, saying, with a slight frown:

"Come, come--work!"

He would begin his work again, but within five minutes she would ask
some adroit question that led him back to the sole topic that interested
them.

By this time she began to feel some fear deep in her heart. She longed
to be loved--but not too much! Sure of not being led away, she yet
feared to allow him to venture too far, thereby losing him, since
then she would be compelled to drive him to despair after seeming to
encourage him. Yet, should it become necessary to renounce this tender
and delicate friendship, this stream of pleasant converse which rippled
along bearing nuggets of love like a river whose sand is full of gold,
it would cause her great sorrow--a grief that would be heart-breaking.

When she set out from her own home to go to the painter's studio, a wave
of joy, warm and penetrating, overflowed her spirit, making it light and
happy. As she laid her hand on Olivier's bell, her breast throbbed with