o wanted to prevent nature from entering their show.

Claude listened to him with impatient irritation. He had taken up his
palette and was shuffling about in front of his picture. The other one
understood at last.

'You want to work, I see; all right, we'll leave you.'

Irma, however, still stared at the painter, with her vague smile,
astonished at the stupidity of this simpleton, who did not seem to
appreciate her, and seized despite herself with a whim to please him.
His studio was ugly, and he himself wasn't handsome; but why should he
put on such bugbear airs? She chaffed him for a moment, and on going off
again offered to sit for him, emphasising her offer by warmly pressing
his hand.

'Whenever you like,' were her parting words.

They had gone at last, and Claude was obliged to pull the screen aside,
for Christine, looking very white, remained seated behind it, as if she
lacked the strength to rise. She did not say a word about the girl, but
simply declared that she had felt very frightened; and--trembling lest
there should come another knock--she wanted to go at once, carrying away
with her, as her startled looks testified, the disturbing thought of
many things which she did not mention.

In fact, for a long time that sphere of brutal art, that studio full of
glaring pictures, had caused her a feeling of discomfort. Wounded in all
her feelings, full of repugnance, she could not get used to it all. She
had grown up full of affectionate admiration for a very different style
of art--her mother's fine water-colours, those fans of dreamy delicacy,
in which lilac-tinted couples floated about in bluish gardens--and she
quite failed to understand Claude's work. Even now she often amused
herself by painting tiny girlish landscapes, two or three subjects
repeated over and over again--a lake with a ruin, a water-mill beating
a stream, a chalet and some pine trees, white with snow. And she felt
surprised that an intelligent young fellow should paint in such an
unreasonable manner, so ugly and so untruthful besides. For she not
only thought Claude's realism monstrously ugly, but considered it beyond
every permissible truth. In fact, she thought at times that he must be
mad.

One day Claude absolutely insisted upon seeing a small sketch-book which
she had brought away from Clermont, and which she had spoken about.
After objecting for a long while, she brought it with her, flattered at
heart and feeling very curious to