body. It has fallen upon the crowd below, and they lift up their arms to
receive and sustain it. Do you understand?"

Yes, he understood; he even thought the conception quite original; but
he held himself as belonging to the modern style, and as his fair friend
reclined upon the divan, with one daintily-shod foot peeping out,
giving to the eye the sensation of flesh gleaming through the almost
transparent stocking, he said: "Ah, that is what I should paint! That is
life--a woman's foot at the edge of her skirt! Into that subject one may
put everything--truth, desire, poetry. Nothing is more graceful or more
charming than a woman's foot; and what mystery it suggests: the hidden
limb, lost yet imagined beneath its veiling folds of drapery!"

Sitting on the floor, _a la Turque_, he seized her shoe and drew it off,
and the foot, coming out of its leather sheath, moved about quickly,
like a little animal surprised at being set free.

"Isn't that elegant, distinguished, and material--more material than the
hand? Show me your hand, Any!"

She wore long gloves reaching to the elbow. In order to remove one she
took it by the upper edge and slipped it down quickly, turning it inside
out, as one would skin a snake. The arm appeared, white, plump, round,
so suddenly bared as to produce an idea of complete and bold nudity.

She gave him her hand, which drooped from her wrist. The rings sparkled
on her white fingers, and the narrow pink nails seemed like amorous
claws protruding at the tips of that little feminine paw.

Olivier Bertin handled it tenderly and admiringly. He played with the