Shutting himself up in his studio, he stood in mental exaltation before the portrait, his lips longing to press themselves on the painting, whereon something of herself was fixed; and again and again he looked out of the window into the street.  Every gown he saw in the distance made his heart throb quickly.  Twenty times he believed that he saw her; then when the approaching woman had passed he sat down again, as if overcome by a deception.

Suddenly he saw her, doubted, then took his opera-glass, recognized her, and, dizzy with violent emotion, sat down once more to await her.

When she entered he threw himself on his knees and tried to take her hands, but she drew them away abruptly, and, as he remained at her feet, filled with anguish, his eyes raised to hers, she said haughtily: 

“What are you doing, Monsieur?  I do not understand that attitude.”

“Oh, Madame, I entreat you—­”

She interrupted him harshly: 

“Rise!  You are ridiculous!”

He rose, dazed, and murmured: 

“What is the matter?  Do not treat me in this way—­I love you!”

Then, in a few short, dry phrases, she signified her wishes, and decreed the situation.

“I do not understand what you wish to say.  Never speak to me of your love, or I shall leave this studio never to return.  If you forget for a single moment this condition of my presence here, you never will see me again.”

He looked at her, crushed by this unexpected harshness; then he understood, and murmured: 

“I shall obey, Madame.”

“Very well,” she rejoined; “I expected that of you!  Now work, for you are long in finishing that portrait.”

He took up his palette and began to paint, but his hand trembled, his troubled eyes looked without seeing; he felt a desire to weep, so deeply wounded was his heart.

He tried to talk to her; she barely answered him.  When he attempted to pay her some little compliment on her color, she cut him short in a tone so brusque that he felt suddenly one of those furies of a lover that change tenderness to hatred.  Through soul and body he felt a nervous shock, and in a moment he detested her.  Yes, yes, that was, indeed, woman!  She, too, was like all the others!  Why not?  She, too, was false, changeable, and weak, like all of them.  She had attracted him, seduced him with girlish ruses, trying to overcome him without intending to give him anything in return, enticing him only to refuse him, employing toward him all the tricks of cowardly coquettes who seem always on the point of yielding so long as the man who cringes like a dog before them dares not carry out his desire.

But the situation was the worse for her, after all; he had taken her, he had overcome her.  She might try to wash away that fact and answer him insolently; she could efface nothing, and he—­he would forget it!  Indeed, it would have been a fine bit of folly to embarrass himself with this sort of mistress, who would eat into his artist life with the capricious teeth of a pretty woman.