As a matter of custom, the young girl should not have returned home until autumn, but her father had suddenly conceived a plan for her marriage, and sent for her that she might meet immediately the Marquis de Farandal, to whom he wished her to be betrothed.  But this plan was kept quite secret, and Madame de Guilleroy had told only Olivier Bertin of it, in strict confidence.

“Then your husband’s idea is quite decided upon?” said he at last.

“Yes; I even think it a very happy idea.”

Then they talked of other things.

She returned to the subject of painting, and wished to make him decide to paint a Christ.  He opposed the suggestion, thinking that there was already enough of them in the world; but she persisted, and grew impatient in her argument.

“Oh, if I knew how to draw I would show you my thought:  it should be very new, very bold.  They are taking him down from the cross, and the man who has detached the hands has let drop the whole upper part of the body.  It has fallen upon the crowd below, and they lift up their arms to receive and sustain it.  Do you understand?”

Yes, he understood; he even thought the conception quite original; but he held himself as belonging to the modern style, and as his fair friend reclined upon the divan, with one daintily-shod foot peeping out, giving to the eye the sensation of flesh gleaming through the almost transparent stocking, he said:  “Ah, that is what I should paint!  That is life—­a woman’s foot at the edge of her skirt!  Into that subject one may put everything—­truth, desire, poetry.  Nothing is more graceful or more charming than a woman’s foot; and what mystery it suggests:  the hidden limb, lost yet imagined beneath its veiling folds of drapery!”

Sitting on the floor, a la Turque, he seized her shoe and drew it off, and the foot, coming out of its leather sheath, moved about quickly, like a little animal surprised at being set free.

“Isn’t that elegant, distinguished, and material—­more material than the hand?  Show me your hand, Any!”

She wore long gloves reaching to the elbow.  In order to remove one she took it by the upper edge and slipped it down quickly, turning it inside out, as one would skin a snake.  The arm appeared, white, plump, round, so suddenly bared as to produce an idea of complete and bold nudity.

She gave him her hand, which drooped from her wrist.  The rings sparkled on her white fingers, and the narrow pink nails seemed like amorous claws protruding at the tips of that little feminine paw.

Olivier Bertin handled it tenderly and admiringly.  He played with the fingers as if they were live toys, while saying: 

“What a strange thing!  What a strange thing!  What a pretty little member, intelligent and adroit, which executes whatever one wills—­books, laces, houses, pyramids, locomotives, pastry, or caresses, which last is its pleasantest function.”