work, as to swallow large mouthfuls of bread without taking breath.

'Why, it's enough to kill one here,' he suddenly exclaimed. 'It must
be this confounded heat that's making me ill.'

After all, the sun had shifted, and it was far less hot. But he opened
a small window on a level with the roof, and inhaled, with an air of
profound relief, the whiff of warm air that entered. Then he took up
his sketch of Christine's head and for a long while he lingered
looking at it.



II

IT had struck twelve, and Claude was working at his picture when there
was a loud, familiar knock at the door. With an instinctive yet
involuntary impulse, the artist slipped the sketch of Christine's
head, by the aid of which he was remodelling the principal figure of
his picture, into a portfolio. After which he decided to open the
door.

'You, Pierre!' he exclaimed, 'already!'

Pierre Sandoz, a friend of his boyhood, was about twenty-two, very
dark, with a round and determined head, a square nose, and gentle
eyes, set in energetic features, girt round with a sprouting beard.

'I breakfasted earlier than usual,' he answered, 'in order to give you
a long sitting. The devil! you are getting on with it.'