colors, seized his brush, and we began the work with frenzy and with love.

And while we were rapt in the beauty of the subject, the fever of creation sweeping over us under the influence of some god among the gods of art, we heard a faint cry and saw the leaning body before us collapse upon the plat-form. We ran to her, and the com-rade nearest her tried to help her; she could not stand, but a voice in which every summoning echo of life could be heard murmured: —I am hungry; for three days I have tasted nothing but water.

The comrades scattered quick as a flash and came back carrying bread and fruit and wine and cured meats enough for a whole clan, and we began to feed her food and drink, morsel by morsel, as doves feed their squabs, until she had eaten and drunk her fill, and life came back to her body, and calm to her eyes, when she saw fifty eyes gazing at her, wanting to wrest from her the secret of her buried pain—nay, the secret of her hunger, when she possessed such beauty. But silence settled over the hall when she returned to her first stance, and each of us went back to his tools and his colors.

In the rest period the boldest of the comrades approached her and asked her to tell us her story. She shook her head and did not answer. But she could not keep her silence for long against the friendliness with which we showered her; so she sat upon her platform—naked as she was—gathered us around her, and began her story. She said:

I am the daughter of a famous doctor in Lyon. My name is Andrée. From this moment you may call me by that name; and if it does not please you, you may exchange it for any name you wish. I was reared in my parents' house with a religious bourgeois upbringing, and schooled at the nuns' school; my father neglected no side of refinement and culture, and so I obtained my certificate in philosophy, and after it I wanted to study medicine—and here my story began.

I made the acquaintance of a

young man among my comrades, charming and handsome. We fell in love and promised each other marriage; but I came to be unable to bear being away from him for a minute, so I told my parents of my love. They went wild, and made me give solemn pledges to cut off every relation with him, for reasons they told me were very grave, and which it was not fitting that I should know... As for me, I had resolved to obey my parents; but when I met Jean—that is his name—I forgot everything and threw myself into his arms weeping, and told him what had happened. He bent over me and assured me of his love and his constancy, and assured me too that he hoped, the moment he passed his final examinations, to win the two crowns: the crown of laurel and the crown of blossom.

My alarm was calmed, and we went back to meeting whenever a meeting offered itself. Everything returned to what it had been, and we lived as two lovers for a time for which people and birds and stars envied us. Until the calamity fell. It was on a stormy night; we had gone to see a sentimental film, and instead of taking me home as usual, my beloved led me to his room—without my offering any resistance...

I do not wish to tell you anything of that night of mine, for my words and your colors are too feeble to describe it or depict it. I had believed I had become the happiest woman in existence—and behold, I was the most wretched woman in the world.

I returned the following evening to my parents' house, and there was a long interrogation that lasted hours, at the end of which I confessed everything. My reward was a slap across my face, a curse from my father's mouth, and expulsion from the house in which I had grown up. So I went out weeping—for a nest whose sky I had filled with song, for a home whose happiness and only hope I had been but yesterday, and for two parents whom manliness and motherhood themselves might envy me.

I went out with bowed head,

unconscious of myself, and kept walking, my feet falling to the measures of a tune playing in my ears a despairing strain, death recurring at the beginning and the end of each of its passages. In the darkness... until I reached the edge of the river, and the strain grew stronger. Then I saw specters of bones dancing upon the water—one could hear their rattling and clattering as they writhed and swayed, sinking and rising, receding and drawing near, plunging into the water and climbing above it. Then I saw them leap onto the embankment and form a ring that circled around me, carousing and singing. Then the ring began to tighten and tighten, until the breath of the dancers touched my face and their revels roared in my head; I lost my senses, and a black cloud overshadowed me, plucked me from the dry land, and sank with me into the depths of the flood.

I awoke to a soft, tender voice, and I would not open my eyes for fear of losing the pleasure of that voice. But the voice kept insisting, calling me, imploring me to open my eyes and answer. I did, and found myself in a small white room, all of it white. And the voice that had driven the black cloud from me and brought me back to life was the voice of my mother, kneeling over my bed, holding my head between her hands and washing it with her tears. No sooner had I opened my eyes than she went mad with joy and fell to kissing me and weeping, until the nurse pulled her away from my bed.

I stayed a month in the hospital, and my mother would visit me twice each day. As for my father, I saw nothing of his face; and whenever I asked my mother about him, she would make up excuses to still my questioning... But Jean—where was Jean? Did he not know what had befallen me? Had he not read

the news of my body being pulled from the river in the papers? He must have imagined that I was dead. Poor Jean. He is weeping for me, no doubt, and weeping for a future we