chamber of the Minister of State, trembled a little as he raised the
curtain masking the door of the studio which had been left open. It was
a splendid sculptor's studio, the front of which, on the street corner,
semi-circular in shape, gave the room one whole wall of glass, with
pilasters at the sides, a large, well-lighted bay, opal-coloured just
then by reason of the fog. More ornate than are usually such work-rooms,
which the stains of the plaster, the boasting-tools, the clay, the
puddles of water generally cause to resemble a stone-mason's shed, this
one added a touch of coquetry to its artistic purpose. Green plants in
every corner, a few good pictures suspended against the bare wall
and, here and there, resting upon oak brackets, two or three works
of Sebastien Ruys, of which the last, exhibited after his death, was
covered with a piece of black gauze.

The mistress of the house, Felicia Ruys, the daughter of the famous
sculptor and herself already known by two masterpieces, the bust of her
father and that of the Duc de Mora, was standing in the middle of the
studio, occupied in the modelling of a figure. Wearing a tightly fitting
riding-habit of blue cloth with long folds, a fichu of China silk
twisted about her neck like a man's tie, her black, fine hair caught up
carelessly above the antique modelling of her small head, Felicia was
at work with an extreme earnestness which added to her beauty the
concentration, the intensity which are given to the features by an
attentive and satisfied expression. But that changed immediately upon
the arrival of the doctor.

"Ah, it is you," said she brusquely, as though awaked from a dream. "The
bell was rung, then? I did not hear it."

And in the ennui, the lassitude that suddenly took possession of that