o frighten her a little. She
cast sidelong glances around it, astonished at so much disorder and
carelessness. Before the stove the cinders of the previous winter still
lay in a heap. Besides the bed, the small washstand, and the couch,
there was no other furniture than an old dilapidated oaken wardrobe and
a large deal table, littered with brushes, colours, dirty plates, and
a spirit lamp, atop of which was a saucepan, with shreds of vermicelli
sticking to its sides. Some rush-bottomed chairs, their seats the worse
for wear, were scattered about beside spavined easels. Near the couch
the candlestick used on the previous night stood on the floor, which
looked as if it had not been swept for fully a month. There was only the
cuckoo clock, a huge one, with a dial illuminated with crimson flowers,
that looked clean and bright, ticking sonorously all the while. But what
especially frightened her were some sketches in oils that hung frameless
from the walls, a serried array of sketches reaching to the floor, where
they mingled with heaps of canvases thrown about anyhow. She had never
seen such terrible painting, so coarse, so glaring, showing a violence
of colour, that jarred upon her nerves like a carter's oath heard on the
doorstep of an inn. She cast her eyes down for a moment, and then became
attracted by a picture, the back of which was turned to her. It was
the large canvas at which the painter was working, and which he pushed
against the wall every night, the better to judge it on the morrow
in the surprise of the first glance. What could it be, that one, she
wondered, since he dared not even show it? And, meantime, through the
vast room, a sheet of burning sunlight, falling straight from the window
panes, unchecked by any blind, spread with the flow of molten gold over
all the broken-down furniture, whose devil-may-care shabbiness it threw
into bold relief.

Claude began to feel the silence oppressive; he wanted to say something,
no matter what, first, in order to be polite, and more especially to
divert her attention from her pose. But cudgel his brain as he would, he
could only think of asking: 'Pray, what is your name?'

She opened her eyes, which she had closed, as if she were feeling
sleepy.

'Christine,' she said.

At which he seemed surprised. Neither had he told her his name. Since
the night before they had been together, side by side, without knowing
one another.

'My name is Claude.'

And, having lo