not! And it is you--you who restrain me!"

But there were no traces of her passion in her face when she went to
the little studio the next day as usual. When the artist opened the
door for her, it struck him that she was calm even to coldness.

Instead of sitting down, she went to the easel and stood before it.

"Monsieur," she said, "I have discovered where your mistake lies. You
have tried to paint what you fancied must once have existed, though it
exists no longer. That is your mistake. It has never existed at all. I
remember no youth, no childhood. Life began for me as it will end. It
was my fate that it should. I was born in the lowest quarter of Paris.
I knew only poverty, brutality, and crime. My beauty simply raised me
beyond their power. Where should I gain what you have insisted in
bestowing upon me?"

He simply stood still and looked at her.

"God knows!" he answered at length. "I do not."

"God!" she returned with her bitter little laugh. "Yes--God!"

Then she went to her place, and said no more.

But the next Sunday she was at the American chapel again, and the
next, and the next. She could scarcely have told why herself. She did
not believe the doctrines she heard preached, and she did not expect
to be converted to belief in them. Often, as the service proceeded, a
faint smile of derision curved her lips; but from her seat in the
obscure corner she had chosen she could see a thin, dark face and a
stooping figure, and could lean back against the wall with a sense of
repose.

"It is quiet here," was her thought. "One can be quiet, and that is
much."

"What is the matter with her?" the men who knew her began to ask one
another. But it was not easy for them to discover how the subtle
change they saw had been wrought. They were used to her caprices and
to occasional fits of sullenness, but they had never seen her in just
such a mood as she was now. She would bear no jests from them, she
would not join in their gayeties. Sometimes for days together she shut
herself up in her room, and they did not see her at all.

The picture progressed but slowly. Sometimes the artist's hand so
trembled with weakness that he could not proceed with his work. More
than once Natalie saw the brush suddenly fall from his nerveless
fingers. He was very weak in these days, and the spot of hectic red
glowed brightly on his cheek.

"I am a poor fellow at best," he would say to her, "and now I am at my
worst. I am afraid I