The sordidness of this disgusted Luc.
“It is weakness to pin your fortunes to the skirts of a woman,” he said.
The painter looked at him.
“Are you going your way uncheered by any thought of any woman? Can you manage without laying your ambitions at some one’s feet?”
Luc flushed.
“I have never met the woman who could break my heart,” he answered.
“Yet——” added the painter. “As for my picture,” he continued, “I took her, for some reason, as Bellona, with the hounds in leash and her drapery carried by a light wind. The drapery was very well put in.”
The daylight was now full in the sombre room, and the dark furniture stood out clear against the shining walls; it fully revealed, too, the young artist, and showed that his peculiar pallor was no trick of light, but the colour of his face.
Luc watched him keenly. There seemed a wildness in his words, in his expression, in his action in asking for the company of a stranger, that made Luc think that perhaps some anguish had sent him out of his wits; but even while he was thinking this, and wondering what comfort he could offer, the painter turned in a perfectly composed manner, and raising the hour-glass from the table between the windows, looked at it with a smile.
The sand had nearly run through.