"Scientific work, isn't it?"
"Yes. And there's a big stretch of it in front of me. That's why I'm not travelling on to Monte Carlo. You understand my position now, Miss Verney?"
"Quite."
"I'm right in calling you Miss Verney?"
"Yes." Then she added: "And you're wondering why an unmarried woman should be wandering alone amongst the by-ways of France?"
"I can see that you also have work to do."
Rivière looked towards her almost finished sketch of the Roman baths. She removed it and passed him the rest of the book. He found the book filled with curiously formal sketches and paintings of scenery—woodland glades, open heaths, temples, arenas, and so on. These sketches caught boldly at the high-lights of what they pictured, and ignored detail. The colouring was also very noticeably simplified—"impressionistic" would better express it.
"They look like stage scenes," he commented.
"They are. Sketches for stage scenes. I'm a scene painter. Just now I'm gathering material for the staging of a Roman drama with a setting in Roman Provence. Barrèze is to produce it at the Odéon. It's my first big chance."
Rivière pointed to one of her sketches. "Wasn't this worked into a scene for 'Ames Nues,' at the Chatelet?"