“It need not mock you,” he answered. “I could not have painted it if I had not felt it. It is yourself—yourself.”
“Myself?” she said. “Do you think, Monsieur, that the men who have painted me before would know it?”
She gave it another glance and a shrill laugh burst from her, but the next instant it broke off and ended in another sound. She fell upon her knees by the empty chair, her open hands flung outward, her sobs strangling her.
He stood quite near her, looking down.
“I have not thought of anything but my work,” he said. “Why should I?”
The following Sunday night the artist Masson met in going down-stairs a closely veiled figure coming up. He knew it and spoke.
“What, Natalie?” he said. “You? One might fancy you had been to church.”
“I have been,” she returned in a cold voice,—“to the church of the Americans in the Rue de Berri.”