"It hurts, but it is not the needle."
"Well, now you can take your wart away with you."
Two days after, the calcined wart fell from my hand, leaving behind it a little speck no bigger than a lentil; and that speck is there still, and is of a whiteness which contrasts strongly with the colour of the rest of the hand. And every day I set to work writing, I must needs look at this little white spot, and when I have looked at it long, it seems to me as if her face were appearing before me in the midst of this tiny circle just as it looked then; and then that face runs through all its variations down to that last shape of all, which still startles me from my slumbers.
CHAPTER III
MY MASTERPIECE AND MY HUT
In the later stages of the painting we could converse. Indeed, conversation is necessary for completing one's study of one's subject, and prevents, besides, the constraint of sitting from becoming too tiresome.
"Have you read the poems of Petöfi?"[12]
[12] The Burns of Hungary.
"Oh, at our house we read nothing."