The master then went from easel to easel, scolding, flattering,
jesting, and making, as usual, his jests more dreaded than his
reprimands. Ginevra had not obeyed the professor's order, but remained
at her post, firmly resolved not to quit it. She took a sheet of paper
and began to sketch in sepia the head of the hidden man. A work done
under the impulse of an emotion has always a stamp of its own. The
faculty of giving to representations of nature or of thought their
true coloring constitutes genius, and often, in this respect, passion
takes the place of it. So, under the circumstances in which Ginevra
now found herself, the intuition which she owed to a powerful effect
upon her memory, or, possibly, to necessity, that mother of great
things, lent her, for the moment, a supernatural talent. The head of
the young officer was dashed upon the paper in the midst of an awkward
trembling which she mistook for fear, and in which a physiologist
would have recognized the fire of inspiration. From time to time she
glanced furtively at her companions, in order to hide the sketch if
any of them came near her. But in spite of her watchfulness, there was
a moment when she did not see the eyeglass of the pitiless Amelie
turned full upon the drawing from the shelter of a great portfolio.
Mademoiselle Thirion, recognizing the portrait of the mysterious man,
showed herself abruptly, and Ginevra hastily covered the sheet of
paper.

"Why do you stay there in spite of my advice, mademoiselle?" asked the
professor, gravely.

The pupil turned her easel so that no one but the master could see the
sketch, which she placed upon it, and said, in an agitated voice:--