Эмиль Золя
His Masterpiece
And if Christine failed to look amused at all this, Claude rose up and said, in a churlish voice: ‘Oh, you; nothing will make you laugh – let’s go to bed.’
He still adored her, but she no longer sufficed. Another torment had invincibly seized hold of him – the passion for art, the thirst for fame.
In the spring, Claude, who, with an affectation of disdain, had sworn he would never again exhibit, began to worry a great deal about the Salon. Whenever he saw Sandoz he questioned him about what the comrades were going to send. On the opening day he went to Paris and came back the same evening, stern and trembling. There was only a bust by Mahoudeau, said he, good enough, but of no importance. A small landscape by Gagniere, admitted among the ruck, was also of a pretty sunny tone. Then there was nothing else, nothing but Fagerolles’ picture – an actress in front of her looking-glass painting her face. He had not mentioned it at first; but he now spoke of it with indignant laughter. What a trickster that Fagerolles was! Now that he had missed his prize he was no longer afraid to exhibit – he threw the School overboard; but you should have seen how skilfully he managed it, what compromises he effected, painting in a style which aped the audacity of truth without possessing one original merit. And it would be sure to meet with success, the bourgeois were only too fond of being titillated while the artist pretended to hustle them. Ah! it was time indeed for a true artist to appear in that mournful desert of a Salon, amid all the knaves and the fools. And, by heavens, what a place might be taken there!
Christine, who listened while he grew angry, ended by faltering:
‘If you liked, we might go back to Paris.’
‘Who was talking of that?’ he shouted. ‘One can never say a word to you but you at once jump to false conclusions.’
Six weeks afterwards he heard some news that occupied his mind for a week. His friend Dubuche was going to marry Mademoiselle Regine Margaillan, the daughter of the owner of La Richaudiere. It was an intricate story, the details of which surprised and amused him exceedingly. First of all, that cur Dubuche had managed to hook a medal for a design of a villa in a park, which he had exhibited; that of itself was already sufficiently amusing, as it was said that the drawing had been set on its legs by his master, Dequersonniere, who had quietly obtained this medal for him from the jury over which he presided. Then the best of it was that this long-awaited reward had decided the marriage. Ah! it would be nice trafficking if medals were now awarded to settle needy pupils in rich families! Old Margaillan, like all parvenus, had set his heart upon having a son-in-law who could help him, by bringing authentic diplomas and fashionable clothes into the business; and for some time past he had had his eyes on that young man, that pupil of the School of Arts, whose notes were excellent, who was so persevering, and so highly recommended by his masters. The medal aroused his enthusiasm; he at once gave the young fellow his daughter and took him as a partner, who would soon increase his millions now lying idle, since he knew all that was needful in order to build properly. Besides, by this arrangement poor Regine, always low-spirited and ailing, would at least have a husband in perfect health.
‘Well, a man must be fond of money to marry that wretched flayed kitten,’ repeated Claude.
And as Christine compassionately took the girl’s part, he added:
‘But I am not down upon her. So much the better if the marriage does not finish her off. She is certainly not to be blamed, if her father, the ex-stonemason, had the stupid ambition to marry a girl of the middle-classes. Her father, you know, has the vitiated blood of generations of drunkards in his veins, and her mother comes of a stock in the last stages of degeneracy. Ah! they may coin money, but that doesn’t prevent them from being excrescences on the face of the earth!’
He was growing ferocious, and Christine had to clasp him in her arms and kiss him, and laugh, to make him once more the good-natured fellow of earlier days. Then, having calmed down, he professed to understand things, saying that he approved of the marriages of his old chums. It was true enough, all three had taken wives unto themselves. How funny life was!
Once more the summer drew to an end; it was the fourth spent at Bennecourt. In reality they could never be happier than now; life was peaceful and cheap in the depths of that village. Since they had been there they had never lacked money. Claude’s thousand francs a year and the proceeds of the few pictures he had sold had sufficed for their wants; they had even put something by, and had bought some house linen. On the other hand, little Jacques, by now two years and a half old, got on admirably in the country. From morning till night he rolled about the garden, ragged and dirt-begrimed, but growing as he listed in robust ruddy health. His mother often did not know where to take hold of him when she wished to wash him a bit. However, when she saw him eat and sleep well she did not trouble much; she reserved her anxious affection for her big child of an artist, whose despondency filled her with anguish. The situation grew worse each day, and although they lived on peacefully without any cause for grief, they, nevertheless, drifted to melancholy, to a discomfort that showed itself in constant irritation.
It was all over with their first delights of country life. Their rotten boat, staved in, had gone to the bottom of the Seine. Besides, they did not even think of availing themselves of the skiff that the Faucheurs had placed at their disposal. The river bored them; they had grown too lazy to row. They repeated their exclamations of former times respecting certain delightful nooks in the islets, but without ever being tempted to return and gaze upon them. Even the walks by the river-side had lost their charm – one was broiled there in summer, and one caught cold there in winter. And as for the plateau, the vast stretch of land planted with apple trees that overlooked the village, it became like a distant country, something too far off for one to be silly enough to risk one’s legs there. Their house also annoyed them – that barracks where they had to take their meals amid the greasy refuse of the kitchen, where their room seemed a meeting-place for the winds from every point of the compass. As a finishing stroke of bad luck, the apricots had failed that year, and the finest of the giant rose-bushes, which were very old, had been smitten with some canker or other and died. How sorely time and habit wore everything away! How eternal nature herself seemed to age amidst that satiated weariness. But the worst was that the painter himself was getting disgusted with the country, no longer finding a single subject to arouse his enthusiasm, but scouring the fields with a mournful tramp, as if the whole place were a void, whose life he had exhausted without leaving as much as an overlooked tree, an unforeseen effect of light to interest him. No, it was over, frozen, he should never again be able to paint anything worth looking at in that confounded country!
October came with its rain-laden sky. On one of the first wet evenings Claude flew into a passion because dinner was not ready. He turned that goose of a Melie out of the house and clouted Jacques, who got between his legs. Whereupon, Christine, crying, kissed him and said:
‘Let’s go, oh, let us go back to Paris.’
He disengaged himself, and cried in an angry voice: ‘What, again! Never! do you hear me?’
‘Do it for my sake,’ she said, warmly. ‘It’s I who ask it of you, it’s I that you’ll please.’
‘Why, are you tired of being here, then?’
‘Yes, I shall die if we stay here much longer; and, besides I want you to work. I feel quite certain that your place is there. It would be a crime for you to bury yourself here any longer.’
‘No, leave me!’
He was quivering. On the horizon Paris was calling him, the Paris of winter-tide which was being lighted up once more. He thought he could hear from where he stood the great efforts that his comrades were making, and, in fancy, he returned thither in order that they might not triumph without him, in order that he might become their chief again, since not one of them had strength or pride enough to be such. And amid this hallucination, amid the desire he felt to hasten to Paris, he yet persisted in refusing to do so, from a spirit of involuntary contradiction, which arose, though he could not account for it, from his very entrails. Was it the fear with which the bravest quivers, the mute struggle of happiness seeking to resist the fatality of destiny?
‘Listen,’ said Christine, excitedly. ‘I shall get our boxes ready, and take you away.’
Five days later, after packing and sending their chattels to the railway, they started for Paris.
Claude was already on the road with little Jacques, when Christine fancied that she had forgotten something. She returned alone to the house; and finding it quite bare and empty, she burst out crying. It seemed as if something were being torn from her, as if she were leaving something of herself behind – what, she could not say. How willingly would she have remained! how ardent was her wish to live there always – she who had just insisted on that departure, that return to the city of passion where she scented the presence of a rival. However, she continued searching for what she lacked, and in front of the kitchen she ended by plucking a rose, a last rose, which the cold was turning brown. And then she slowly closed the gate upon the deserted garden.
VII
WHEN Claude found himself once more on the pavement of Paris he was seized with a feverish longing for hubbub and motion, a desire to gad about, scour the whole city, and see his chums. He was off the moment he awoke, leaving Christine to get things shipshape by herself in the studio which they had taken in the Rue de Douai, near the Boulevard de Clichy. In this way, on the second day of his arrival, he dropped in at Mahoudeau’s at eight o’clock in the morning, in the chill, grey November dawn which had barely risen.
However, the shop in the Rue du Cherche-Midi, which the sculptor still occupied, was open, and Mahoudeau himself, half asleep, with a white face, was shivering as he took down the shutters.
Ah! it’s you. The devil! you’ve got into early habits in the country. So it’s settled – you are back for good?’
‘Yes; since the day before yesterday.’
‘That’s all right. Then we shall see something of each other. Come in; it’s sharp this morning.’
But Claude felt colder in the shop than outside. He kept the collar of his coat turned up, and plunged his hands deep into his pockets; shivering before the dripping moisture of the bare walls, the muddy heaps of clay, and the pools of water soddening the floor. A blast of poverty had swept into the place, emptying the shelves of the casts from the antique, and smashing stands and buckets, which were now held together with bits of rope. It was an abode of dirt and disorder, a mason’s cellar going to rack and ruin. On the window of the door, besmeared with whitewash, there appeared in mockery, as it were, a large beaming sun, roughly drawn with thumb-strokes, and ornamented in the centre with a face, the mouth of which, describing a semicircle, seemed likely to burst with laughter.
‘Just wait,’ said Mahoudeau, ‘a fire’s being lighted. These confounded workshops get chilly directly, with the water from the covering cloths.’
At that moment, Claude, on turning round, noticed Chaine on his knees near the stove, pulling the straw from the seat of an old stool to light the coals with. He bade him good-morning, but only elicited a muttered growl, without succeeding in making him look up.
‘And what are you doing just now, old man?’ he asked the sculptor.
‘Oh! nothing of much account. It’s been a bad year – worse than the last one, which wasn’t worth a rap. There’s a crisis in the church-statue business. Yes, the market for holy wares is bad, and, dash it, I’ve had to tighten my belt! Look, in the meanwhile, I’m reduced to this.’
He thereupon took the linen wraps off a bust, showing a long face still further elongated by whiskers, a face full of conceit and infinite imbecility.
‘It’s an advocate who lives near by. Doesn’t he look repugnant, eh? And the way he worries me about being very careful with his mouth. However, a fellow must eat, mustn’t he?’
He certainly had an idea for the Salon; an upright figure, a girl about to bathe, dipping her foot in the water, and shivering at its freshness with that slight shiver that renders a woman so adorable. He showed Claude a little model of it, which was already cracking, and the painter looked at it in silence, surprised and displeased at certain concessions he noticed in it: a sprouting of prettiness from beneath a persistent exaggeration of form, a natural desire to please, blended with a lingering tendency to the colossal. However, Mahoudeau began lamenting; an upright figure was no end of a job. He would want iron braces that cost money, and a modelling frame, which he had not got; in fact, a lot of appliances. So he would, no doubt, decide to model the figure in a recumbent attitude beside the water.
‘Well, what do you say – what do you think of it?’ he asked.
‘Not bad,’ answered the painter at last. ‘A little bit sentimental, in spite of the strapping limbs; but it’ll all depend upon the execution. And put her upright, old man; upright, for there would be nothing in it otherwise.’
The stove was roaring, and Chaine, still mute, rose up. He prowled about for a minute, entered the dark back shop, where stood the bed that he shared with Mahoudeau, and then reappeared, his hat on his head, but more silent, it seemed, than ever. With his awkward peasant fingers he leisurely took up a stick of charcoal and then wrote on the wall: ‘I am going to buy some tobacco; put some more coals in the stove.’ And forthwith he went out.
Claude, who had watched him writing, turned to the other in amazement.
‘What’s up?’
‘We no longer speak to one another; we write,’ said the sculptor, quietly.
‘Since when?’
‘Since three months ago.’
‘And you sleep together?’
‘Yes.’
Claude burst out laughing. Ah! dash it all! they must have hard nuts. But what was the reason of this falling-out? Then Mahoudeau vented his rage against that brute of a Chaine! Hadn’t he, one night on coming home unexpectedly, found him treating Mathilde, the herbalist woman, to a pot of jam? No, he would never forgive him for treating himself in that dirty fashion to delicacies on the sly, while he, Mahoudeau, was half starving, and eating dry bread. The deuce! one ought to share and share alike.
And the grudge had now lasted for nearly three months without a break, without an explanation. They had arranged their lives accordingly; they had reduced their strictly necessary intercourse to a series of short phrases charcoaled on the walls. As for the rest, they lived as before, sharing the same bed in the back shop. After all, there was no need for so much talk in life, people managed to understand one another all the same.
While filling the stove, Mahoudeau continued to relieve his mind.
‘Well, you may believe me if you like, but when a fellow’s almost starving it isn’t disagreeable to keep quiet. Yes, one gets numb amidst silence; it’s like an inside coating that stills the gnawing of the stomach a bit. Ah, that Chaine! You haven’t a notion of his peasant nature. When he had spent his last copper without earning the fortune he expected by painting, he went into trade, a petty trade, which was to enable him to finish his studies. Isn’t the fellow a sharp ‘un, eh? And just listen to his plan. He had some olive oil sent to him from Saint-Firmin, his village, and then he tramped the streets and found a market for the oil among well-to-do families from Provence living in Paris. Unfortunately, it did not last. He is such a clod-hopper that they showed him the door on all sides. And as there was a jar of oil left which nobody would buy, well, old man, we live upon it. Yes, on the days when we happen to have some bread we dip our bread into it.’
Thereupon he pointed to the jar standing in a corner of the shop. Some of the oil having been spilt, the wall and the floor were darkened by large greasy stains.
Claude left off laughing. Ah! misery, how discouraging it was! how could he show himself hard on those whom it crushed? He walked about the studio, no longer vexed at finding models weakened by concessions to middle-class taste; he even felt tolerant with regard to that hideous bust. But, all at once, he came across a copy that Chaine had made at the Louvre, a Mantegna, which was marvellously exact in its dryness.
‘Oh, the brute,’ he muttered, ‘it’s almost the original; he’s never done anything better than that. Perhaps his only fault is that he was born four centuries too late.’
Then, as the heat became too great, he took off his over-coat, adding:
‘He’s a long while fetching his tobacco.’
‘Oh! his tobacco! I know what that means,’ said Mahoudeau, who had set to work at his bust, finishing the whiskers; ‘he has simply gone next door.’
‘Oh! so you still see the herbalist?’
‘Yes, she comes in and out.’
He spoke of Mathilde and Chaine without the least show of anger, simply saying that he thought the woman crazy. Since little Jabouille’s death she had become devout again, though this did not prevent her from scandalising the neighbourhood. Her business was going to wreck, and bankruptcy seemed impending. One night, the gas company having cut off the gas in default of payment, she had come to borrow some of their olive oil, which, after all, would not burn in the lamps. In short, it was quite a disaster; that mysterious shop, with its fleeting shadows of priests’ gowns, its discreet confessional-like whispers, and its odour of sacristy incense, was gliding to the abandonment of ruin. And the wretchedness had reached such a point that the dried herbs suspended from the ceiling swarmed with spiders, while defunct leeches, which had already turned green, floated on the tops of the glass jars.
‘Hallo, here he comes!’ resumed the sculptor. ‘You’ll see her arrive at his heels.’
In fact, Chaine came in. He made a great show of drawing a screw of tobacco from his pocket, then filled his pipe, and began to smoke in front of the stove, remaining obstinately silent, as if there were nobody present. And immediately afterwards Mathilde made her appearance like a neighbour who comes in to say ‘Good morning.’ Claude thought that she had grown still thinner, but her eyes were all afire, and her mouth was seemingly enlarged by the loss of two more teeth. The smell of aromatic herbs which she always carried in her uncombed hair seemed to have become rancid. There was no longer the sweetness of camomile, the freshness of aniseed; she filled the place with a horrid odour of peppermint that seemed to be her very breath.
‘Already at work!’ she exclaimed. ‘Good morning.’ And, without minding Claude, she kissed Mahoudeau. Then, after going to shake hands with the painter in her brazen way, she continued:
‘What do you think? I’ve found a box of mallow root, and we will treat ourselves to it for breakfast. Isn’t that nice of me now! We’ll share.’
‘Thanks,’ said the sculptor, ‘it makes my mouth sticky. I prefer to smoke a pipe.’
And, seeing that Claude was putting on his overcoat again, he asked: ‘Are you going?’
‘Yes. I want to get the rust off, and breathe the air of Paris a bit.’
All the same, he stopped for another few minutes watching Chaine and Mathilde, who stuffed themselves with mallow root, each taking a piece by turns. And though he had been warned, he was again amazed when he saw Mahoudeau take up the stick of charcoal and write on the wall: ‘Give me the tobacco you have shoved into your pocket.’
Without a word, Chaine took out the screw and handed it to the sculptor, who filled his pipe.
‘Well, I’ll see you again soon,’ said Claude.
‘Yes, soon – at any rate, next Thursday, at Sandoz’s.’
Outside, Claude gave an exclamation of surprise on jostling a gentleman, who stood in front of the herbalist’s peering into the shop.
‘What, Jory! What are you doing there?’
Jory’s big pink nose gave a sniff.
‘I? Nothing. I was passing and looked in,’ said he in dismay.
Then he decided to laugh, and, as if there were any one to overhear him, lowered his voice to ask:
‘She is next door with our friends, isn’t she? All right; let’s be off, quick!’
And he took the painter with him, telling him all manner of strange stories of that creature Mathilde.
‘But you used to say that she was frightful,’ said Claude, laughing.
Jory made a careless gesture. Frightful? No, he had not gone as far as that. Besides, there might be something attractive about a woman even though she had a plain face. Then he expressed his surprise at seeing Claude in Paris, and, when he had been fully posted, and learned that the painter meant to remain there for good, he all at once exclaimed:
‘Listen, I am going to take you with me. You must come to lunch with me at Irma’s.’
The painter, taken aback, refused energetically, and gave as a reason that he wasn’t even wearing a frock-coat.
‘What does that matter? On the contrary, it makes it more droll. She’ll be delighted. I believe she has a secret partiality for you. She is always talking about you to us. Come, don’t be a fool. I tell you she expects me this morning, and we shall be received like princes.’
He did not relax his hold on Claude’s arm, and they both continued their way towards the Madeleine, talking all the while. As a rule, Jory kept silent about his many love adventures, just as a drunkard keeps silent about his potations. But that morning he brimmed over with revelations, chaffed himself and owned to all sorts of scandalous things. After all he was delighted with existence, his affairs went apace. His miserly father had certainly cut off the supplies once more, cursing him for obstinately pursuing a scandalous career, but he did not care a rap for that now; he earned between seven and eight thousand francs a year by journalism, in which he was making his way as a gossipy leader writer and art critic. The noisy days of ‘The Drummer,’ the articles at a louis apiece, had been left far behind. He was getting steady, wrote for two widely circulated papers, and although, in his inmost heart he remained a sceptical voluptuary, a worshipper of success at any price, he was acquiring importance, and readers began to look upon his opinions as fiats. Swayed by hereditary meanness, he already invested money every month in petty speculations, which were only known to himself, for never had his vices cost him less than nowadays.
As he and Claude reached the Rue de Moscou, he told the painter that it was there that Irma Becot now lived. ‘Oh! she is rolling in wealth,’ said he, ‘paying twenty thousand francs a year rent and talking of building a house which would cost half a million.’ Then suddenly pulling up he exclaimed: ‘Come, here we are! In with you, quick!’
But Claude still objected. His wife was waiting for him to lunch; he really couldn’t. And Jory was obliged to ring the bell, and then push him inside the hall, repeating that his excuse would not do; for they would send the valet to the Rue de Douai to tell his wife. A door opened and they found themselves face to face with Irma Becot, who uttered a cry of surprise as soon as she perceived the painter.
‘What! is it you, savage?’ she said.
She made him feel at home at once by treating him like an old chum, and, in fact, he saw well enough that she did not even notice his old clothes. He himself was astonished, for he barely recognised her. In the course of four years she had become a different being; her head was ‘made up’ with all an actress’s skill, her brow hidden beneath a mass of curly hair, and her face elongated, by a sheer effort of will, no doubt. And from a pale blonde she had become flaringly carrotty; so that a Titianesque creature seemed to have sprung from the little urchin-like girl of former days. Her house, with all its show of luxury, still had its bald spots. What struck the painter were some good pictures on the walls, a Courbet, and, above all, an unfinished study by Delacroix. So this wild, wilful creature was not altogether a fool, although there was a frightful cat in coloured biscuit standing on a console in the drawing-room.
When Jory spoke of sending the valet to his friend’s place, she exclaimed in great surprise:
‘What! you are married?’
‘Why, yes,’ said Claude, simply.
She glanced at Jory, who smiled; then she understood, and added:
‘Ah! But why did people tell me that you were a woman-hater? I’m awfully vexed, you know. I frightened you, don’t you remember, eh? You still think me very ugly, don’t you? Well, well, we’ll talk about it all some other day.’
It was the coachman who went to the Rue de Douai with a note from Claude, for the valet had opened the door of the dining-room, to announce that lunch was served. The repast, a very delicate one, was partaken of in all propriety, under the icy stare of the servant. They talked about the great building works that were revolutionising Paris; and then discussed the price of land, like middle-class people with money to invest. But at dessert, when they were all three alone with the coffee and liqueurs, which they had decided upon taking there, without leaving the table, they gradually became animated, and dropped into their old familiar ways, as if they had met each other at the Cafe Baudequin.
‘Ah, my lads,’ said Irma, ‘this is the only real enjoyment, to be jolly together and to snap one’s fingers at other people.’
She was twisting cigarettes; she had just placed the bottle of chartreuse near her, and had begun to empty it, looking the while very flushed, and lapsing once more to her low street drollery.
‘So,’ continued Jory, who was apologising for not having sent her that morning a book she wanted, ‘I was going to buy it last night at about ten o’clock, when I met Fagerolles – ’
‘You are telling a lie,’ said she, interrupting him in a clear voice. And to cut short his protestations – ‘Fagerolles was here,’ she added, ‘so you see that you are telling a lie.’
Then, turning to Claude, ‘No, it’s too disgusting. You can’t conceive what a liar he is. He tells lies like a woman, for the pleasure of it, for the merest trifle. Now, the whole of his story amounts simply to this: that he didn’t want to spend three francs to buy me that book. Each time he was to have sent me a bouquet, he had dropped it under the wheels of a carriage, or there were no flowers to be had in all Paris. Ah! there’s a fellow who only cares for himself, and no mistake.’
Jory, without getting in the least angry, tilted back his chair and sucked his cigar, merely saying with a sneer:
‘Oh! if you see Fagerolles now – ’
‘Well, what of it?’ she cried, becoming furious. ‘It’s no business of yours. I snap my fingers at your Fagerolles, do you hear? He knows very well that people don’t quarrel with me. We know each other; we sprouted in the same crack between the paving-stones. Look here, whenever I like, I have only to hold up my finger, and your Fagerolles will be there on the floor, licking my feet.’
She was growing animated, and Jory thought it prudent to beat a retreat.
‘My Fagerolles,’ he muttered; ‘my Fagerolles.’
‘Yes, your Fagerolles. Do you think that I don’t see through you both? He is always patting you on the back, as he hopes to get articles out of you, and you affect generosity and calculate the advantage you’ll derive if you write up an artist liked by the public.’
This time Jory stuttered, feeling very much annoyed on account of Claude being there. He did not attempt to defend himself, however, preferring to turn the quarrel into a joke. Wasn’t she amusing, eh? when she blazed up like that, with her lustrous wicked eyes, and her twitching mouth, eager to indulge in vituperation?
‘But remember, my dear, this sort of thing cracks your Titianesque “make-up,”’ he added.
She began to laugh, mollified at once.
Claude, basking in physical comfort, kept on sipping small glasses of cognac one after another, without noticing it. During the two hours they had been there a kind of intoxication had stolen over them, the hallucinatory intoxication produced by liqueurs and tobacco smoke. They changed the conversation; the high prices that pictures were fetching came into question. Irma, who no longer spoke, kept a bit of extinguished cigarette between her lips, and fixed her eyes on the painter. At last she abruptly began to question him about his wife.
Her questions did not appear to surprise him; his ideas were going astray: ‘She had just come from the provinces,’ he said. ‘She was in a situation with a lady, and was a very good and honest girl.’
‘Pretty?’
‘Why, yes, pretty.’
For a moment Irma relapsed into her reverie, then she said, smiling: ‘Dash it all! How lucky you are!’
Then she shook herself, and exclaimed, rising from the table: ‘Nearly three o’clock! Ah! my children, I must turn you out of the house. Yes, I have an appointment with an architect; I am going to see some ground near the Parc Monceau, you know, in the new quarter which is being built. I have scented a stroke of business in that direction.’
They had returned to the drawing-room. She stopped before a looking-glass, annoyed at seeing herself so flushed.
‘It’s about that house, isn’t it?’ asked Jory. ‘You have found the money, then?’
She brought her hair down over her brow again, then with her hands seemed to efface the flush on her cheeks; elongated the oval of her face, and rearranged her tawny head, which had all the charm of a work of art; and finally, turning round, she merely threw Jory these words by way of reply: Look! there’s my Titianesque effect back again.’
