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Strong as Death by Guy de Maupassant
page 25 of 304 (08%)
stations, and their titles.

The painter pleased her at first because such a man was entirely a
novelty to her. She found the studio a very amusing place, laughed
gaily, felt that she, too, was clever, and felt grateful to him for the
pleasure she took in the sittings. He pleased her, too, because he was
handsome, strong, and famous, no woman, whatever she may pretend, being
indifferent to physical beauty and glory. Flattered at having been
admired by this expert, and disposed, on her side, to think well of him,
she had discovered in him an alert and cultivated mind, delicacy, fancy,
the true charm of intelligence, and an eloquence of expression that
seemed to illumine whatever he said.

A rapid friendship sprang up between them, and the hand-clasp exchanged
every day as she entered seemed more and more to express something of
the feeling in their hearts.

Then, without deliberate design, with no definite determination, she
felt within her heart a growing desire to fascinate him, and yielded to
it. She had foreseen nothing, planned nothing; she was only coquettish
with added grace, as a woman always is toward a man who pleases her more
than all others; and in her manner with him, in her glances and smiles,
was that seductive charm that diffuses itself around a woman in whose
breast has awakened a need of being loved.

She said flattering things to him which meant "I find you very
agreeable, Monsieur;" and she made him talk at length in order to show
him, by her attention, how much he aroused her interest. He would cease
to paint and sit beside her; and in that mental exaltation due to an
intense desire to please, he had crises of poetry, of gaiety or of
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