'Well, now, what are you going to call it?' asked Sandoz.

'_The Open Air_,' replied Claude, somewhat curtly.

The title sounded rather technical to the writer, who, in spite of
himself, was sometimes tempted to introduce literature into pictorial
art.

'_The Open Air_! that doesn't suggest anything.'

'There is no occasion for it to suggest anything. Some women and a man
are reposing in a forest in the sunlight. Does not that suffice? Don't
fret, there's enough in it to make a masterpiece.'

He threw back his head and muttered between his teeth: 'Dash it all!
it's very black still. I can't get Delacroix out of my eye, do what I
will. And then the hand, that's Courbet's manner. Everyone of us dabs
his brush into the romantic sauce now and then. We had too much of it
in our youth, we floundered in it up to our very chins. We need a
jolly good wash to get clear of it.'

Sandoz shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of despair. He also
bewailed the fact that he had been born at what he called the
confluence of Hugo and Balzac. Nevertheless, Claude remained
satisfied, full of the happy excitement of a successful sitting. If
his friend could give him two or three more Sundays the man in the
jacket would be all there. He had enough of him for the present. Both
began to joke, for, as a rule, Claude almost killed his models, only
letting them go when they were fainting, half dead with fatigue. He
himself now very nigh dropped, his legs bending under him, and his