’Well, as it annoys you, let’s say no more about it.  But if you only knew.  I’ve got a figure in my picture yonder which doesn’t make head-way at all, and you were just in the very note.  As for me, when it’s a question of painting, I’d kill father and mother, you know.  Well, you’ll excuse me, won’t you?  And if you’d like me to be very nice, you’d just give me a few minutes more.  No, no; keep quiet as you are; I only want the head—­nothing but the head.  If I could finish that, it would be all right.  Really now, be kind; put your arm as it was before, and I shall be very grateful to you—­grateful all my life long.’

It was he who was entreating now, pitifully waving his crayon amid the emotion of his artistic craving.  Besides, he had not stirred, but remained crouching on his low chair, at a distance from the bed.  At last she risked the ordeal, and uncovered her tranquillised face.  What else could she do?  She was at his mercy, and he looked so wretchedly unhappy.

Nevertheless, she still hesitated, she felt some last scruples.  But eventually, without saying a word, she slowly brought her bare arm from beneath the coverings, and again slipped it under her head, taking care, however, to keep the counterpane tightly round her throat.

‘Ah! how kind you are!  I’ll make haste, you will be free in a minute.’

He bent over his drawing, and only looked at her now and then with the glance of a painter who simply regards the woman before him as a model.  At first she became pink again; the consciousness that she was showing her bare arm—­which she would have shown in a ball-room without thinking at all about it—­filled her with confusion.  Nevertheless, the young man seemed so reasonable that she became reassured.  The blush left her cheeks, and her lips parted in a vague confiding smile.  And from between her half-opened eyelids she began to study him.  How he had frightened her the previous night with his thick brown beard, his large head, and his impulsive gestures.  And yet he was not ugly; she even detected great tenderness in the depths of his brown eyes, while his nose altogether surprised her.  It was a finely-cut woman’s nose, almost lost amidst the bristling hair on his lips.  He shook slightly with a nervous anxiety which made his crayon seem a living thing in his slender hand, and which touched her though she knew not why.  She felt sure he was not bad-natured, his rough, surly ways arose from bashfulness.  She did not decipher all this very clearly, but she divined it, and began to put herself at her ease, as if she were with a friend.