airy's unwearying patience, the magic of the memories she evokes every
moment in the day, to make life endurable to her beside that
restlessness, that wicked wrath which she can hear grumbling beneath the
girl's silences, and which suddenly bursts forth in a bitter word, in a
_pah_! of disgust _apropos_ of everything. Her group is hideous. No one
will speak of it. All the critics are donkeys. The public? an immense
_goitre_ with three stories of chin. And yet, a few Sundays ago, when
the Duc de Mora came with the superintendent of Fine Arts to see her
work at the studio, she was so happy, so proud of the praise bestowed on
her, so thoroughly delighted with her work, which she admired at a
distance as if it were by another hand, now that the modelling-tool had
ceased to form between her and her work the bond which tends to impair
the impartiality of the artist's judgment.

But it is so every year. When the studio is robbed of the latest work,
when her famous name is once more at the mercy of the public's
unforeseen caprice, Felicia's preoccupations--for she has then no
visible object in life--stray through the empty void of her heart, of
her existence as one who has turned aside from the peaceful furrow,
until she is once more intent upon another task. She shuts herself up,
she refuses to see anybody. One would say that she is distrustful of
herself. The good Jenkins is the only one who can endure her during
those crises. He even seems to take pleasure in them, as if he expected
something from them. And yet God knows she is not amiable to him. Only
yesterday he remained two hours with the beautiful ennui-ridden
creature, who did not so much as speak a single word to him. If that is
the sort of welcome she has in store for the great personage who does
them the honor to dine with them--At that point the gentle Crenmitz, who
has been placidly ruminating all these things and gazing at the slender
toe of her tufted shoes, suddenly remembers that she has promised to
make a dish of Viennese cakes for the dinner of the personage in
question, and quietly leaves the studio on the tips of her little toes.

Still the rain, still the mud, still the beautiful sphinx, crouching in
her seat, her eyes wandering aimlessly over the miry landscape. Of what
is she thinking? What is she watching on those muddy roads, growing dim
in the fading light, with that frown on her brow and that lip curled in
disgust? Is she awaiting her destiny? A mel