Jenkins changed colour.

"I persuaded Constance to go with me. It was the first time for
twenty-five years since her farewell performance, that she had been
inside the Opera-House. It made a great impression on her. During the
ballet, especially, she trembled, she beamed, all her old triumphs
sparkled in her eyes. Happy who has emotions like that. A real type,
that Nabob. You will have to bring him to see me. He has a head that it
would amuse me to do."

"He! Why, he is hideous! You cannot have looked at him carefully."

"On the contrary, I had a perfect view. He was opposite us. That mask,
as of a white Ethiopian, would be superb in marble. And not vulgar,
in any case. Besides, since he is so ugly as that, you will not be
so unhappy as you were last year when I was doing Mora's bust. What a
disagreeable face you had, Jenkins, in those days!"

"For ten years of life," muttered Jenkins in a gloomy voice, "I would
not have that time over again. But you it amuses to behold suffering."

"You know quite well that nothing amuses me," said she, shrugging her
shoulders with a supreme impertinence.

Then, without looking at him, without adding another word, she plunged
into one of those dumb activities by which true artists escape from
themselves and from everything that surrounds them.

Jenkins paced a few steps in the studio, much moved, with avowals on