floor, which looked as if it had not been swept for fully a month.
There was only the cuckoo clock, a huge one, with a dial illuminated
with crimson flowers, that looked clean and bright, ticking sonorously
all the while. But what especially frightened her were some sketches
in oils that hung frameless from the walls, a serried array of
sketches reaching to the floor, where they mingled with heaps of
canvases thrown about anyhow. She had never seen such terrible
painting, so coarse, so glaring, showing a violence of colour, that
jarred upon her nerves like a carter's oath heard on the doorstep of
an inn. She cast her eyes down for a moment, and then became attracted
by a picture, the back of which was turned to her. It was the large
canvas at which the painter was working, and which he pushed against
the wall every night, the better to judge it on the morrow in the
surprise of the first glance. What could it be, that one, she
wondered, since he dared not even show it? And, meantime, through the
vast room, a sheet of burning sunlight, falling straight from the
window panes, unchecked by any blind, spread with the flow of molten
gold over all the broken-down furniture, whose devil-may-care
shabbiness it threw into bold relief.

Claude began to feel the silence oppressive; he wanted to say
something, no matter what, first, in order to be polite, and more
especially to divert her attention from her pose. But cudgel his brain
as he would, he could only think of asking: 'Pray, what is your name?'

She opened her eyes, which she had closed, as if she were feeling
sleepy.

'Christine,' she said.