If he had trembled when Madame Steno began to interest herself in Lincoln, it was solely for the work of the latter, so much the more as for a year he had perceived not a decline but a disturbance in the painting of that artist, too voluntary not to be unequal.  Then Florent had seen, on the other hand, the nerve of Maitland reawakened in the warmth of that little intrigue.

The portrait of Alba promised to be a magnificent study, worthy of being placed beside the famous ‘Femme en violet et en jaune,’ which those envious of Lincoln always remembered.  Moreover, the painter had finished with unparalleled ardor two large compositions partly abandoned.  In the face of that proof of a fever of production more and more active, how would not Florent have blessed Madame Steno, instead of cursing her, so much the more that it sufficed him to close his eyes and to know that his conscience was in repose when opposite his sister?  He knew all, however.  The proof of it was in his shudder when Dorsenne announced to him the clandestine arrival in Rome of Madame Steno’s other lover, and one proof still more certain, the impulse which had precipitated him upon Boleslas, who was parleying with the servant, and now it was he who had accepted the duel which an exasperated rival had certainly come to propose to his dear Lincoln, and he thought only of the latter.

“He must know nothing until afterward.  He would take the affair upon himself, and I have a chance to kill him, that Gorka—­to wound him, at least.  In any case, I will arrange it so that a second duel will be rendered difficult to that lunatic....  But, first of all, let us make sure that we have not spoken too loudly and that they have not heard upstairs the ill-bred fellow’s loud voice.”

It was in such terms that he qualified his adversary of the morrow.  For very little more he would have judged Gorka unpardonable not to thank Lincoln, who had done him the honor to supplant him in the Countess’s favor!

In the meantime, let us cast a glance at the atelier!  When the friend, devoted to complicity, but also to heroism, entered the vast room, he could see at the first glance that he had been mistaken and that no sound of voices had reached that peaceful retreat.

The atelier of the American painter was furnished with a harmonious sumptuousness which real artists know how to gather around them.  The large strip of sky seen through the windows looked down upon a corner veritably Roman—­of the Rome of to-day, which attests an uninterrupted effort toward forming a new city by the side of the old one.  One could see an angle of the old garden and the fragment of an antique building, with a church steeple beyond.  It was on a background of azure, of verdure and of ruins, in a horizon larger and more distant, but composed of the same elements, that was to arise the face of the young girl, designed after the manner, so sharp and so modelled, of the ’Pier della Francesca’, with whom Maitland had been preoccupied for six months.