ment.

'I? Oh, no! Only I am afraid that the public will again fail
to understand. That nude woman in the very midst of Paris--it's
improbable.'

Claude looked naively surprised.

'Ah! you think so? Well, so much the worse. What's the odds, as long as
the woman is well painted? Besides, I need something like that to get my
courage up.'

On the following occasions, Sandoz gently reverted to the strangeness
of the composition, pleading, as was his nature, the cause of outraged
logic. How could a modern painter who prided himself on painting merely
what was real--how could he so bastardise his work as to introduce
fanciful things into it? It would have been so easy to choose another
subject, in which the nude would have been necessary. But Claude became
obstinate, and resorted to lame and violent explanations, for he would
not avow his real motive: an idea which had come to him and which he
would have been at a loss to express clearly. It was, however, a longing
for some secret symbolism. A recrudescence of romanticism made him see
an incarnation of Paris in that nude figure; he pictured the city bare
and impassioned, resplendent with the beauty of woman.

Before the pressing objections of his friend he pretended to be shaken
in his resolutions.

'Well, I'll see; I'll dress my old woman later on, since she worries
you,' he said. 'But meanwhile I shall do her like that. You understand,
she amuses me.'

He never reverted to the subject again, remaining silently obstinate,
merely shrugging his shoulders and smiling with embarrassment whenever
any allusion betrayed the general astonishment which was felt at the
sight of that Venus emerging triumphantly from the froth of the Seine
amidst all the omnibuses on the quays and the lightermen working at the
Port of St. Nicolas.

Spring had come round again, and Claude had once more resolved to work
at his large picture, when in a spirit of prudence he and Christine
modified their daily life. She, at times, could not help feeling uneasy
at seeing all their money so quickly spent. Since the supply had seemed
inexhaustible, they had ceased counting. But, at the end of four years,
they had woke up one morning quite frightened, when, on asking for
accounts, they found that barely three thousand francs were left out
of the twenty thousand. They immediately reverted to severe economy,
stinting themselves as to bread, planning the cutting down of the most
elementary expenses; and