Chapter 9, Part 2 Summary

As Claude returns to work on his grand painting, once again he is dissatisfied with what he is doing and begins to blame Christine for not being the model she was years ago when she posed for his Open Air painting. Not really meaning to be unkind, Claude as the artist rants about Christine's body changed by having given birth. She is devastated, realizing that her rival is one woman. It is herself as a virgin model in the first painting and now as a much older woman with a body that shows the effects of childbirth and age. Claude once again makes a stab at pulling his foot out of his mouth and once again Christine forgives him. Christine is aware that Jacques never really aroused her maternal instincts and has come to hate him for depriving her of the...