'Well,' said Claude, 'good-bye, then; I'll see you to-night.'

'Yes, to-night.'

The painter, out of breath, had stopped at the corner of the Rue des
Beaux Arts. The court gates of the Art School stood wide open in front
of him, and the procession plunged into the yard.

After drawing breath, Claude retraced his steps to the Rue de Seine.
His bad luck was increasing; it seemed ordained that he should not be
able to beguile a chum from work that morning. So he went up the
street, and slowly walked on as far as the Place du Pantheon, without
any definite aim. Then it occurred to him that he might just look into
the Municipal Offices, if only to shake hands with Sandoz. That would,
at any rate, mean ten minutes well spent. But he positively gasped
when he was told by an attendant that M. Sandoz had asked for a day
off to attend a funeral. However, he knew the trick of old. His friend
always found the same pretext whenever he wanted to do a good day's
work at home. He had already made up his mind to join him there, when
a feeling of artistic brotherliness, the scruple of an honest worker,
made him pause; yes, it would be a crime to go and disturb that good
fellow, and infect him with the discouragement born of a difficult
task, at the very moment when he was, no doubt, manfully accomplishing
his own work.

So Claude had to resign himself to his fate. He dragged his black
melancholy along the quays until mid-day, his head so heavy, so full
of thoughts of his lack of power, that he only espied the well-loved
horizons of the Seine through a mist. Then he found himself once more
in the Rue de la Femme-sans-Tete, where he breakfasted at Gomard's