that ever sprouted afresh within him, do what he might. It was his
malady, perhaps, the false principle which he sometimes felt like a
bar across his skull. And when he had reached the quays again, he
thought of going home to see whether his picture was really so very
bad. But the mere idea made him tremble all over. His studio seemed a
chamber of horrors, where he could no more continue to live, as if,
indeed, he had left the corpse of some beloved being there. No, no; to
climb the three flights of stairs, to open the door, to shut himself
up face to face with 'that,' would have needed strength beyond his
courage. So he crossed the Seine and went along the Rue St. Jacques.
He felt too wretched and lonely; and, come what might, he would go to
the Rue d'Enfer to turn Sandoz from his work.

Sandoz's little fourth-floor flat consisted of a dining-room, a
bedroom, and a strip of kitchen. It was tenanted by himself alone; his
mother, disabled by paralysis, occupied on the other side of the
landing a single room, where she lived in morose and voluntary
solitude. The street was a deserted one; the windows of the rooms
overlooked the gardens of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, above which rose
the rounded crest of a lofty tree, and the square tower of St.
Jacques-du-Haut-Pas.

Claude found Sandoz in his room, bending over his table, busy with a
page of 'copy.'

'I am disturbing you?' said Claude.

'Not at all. I have been working ever since morning, and I've had
enough of it. I've been killing myself for the last hour over a
sentence that reads anyhow, and which has worried me all through my