"Rise! You are ridiculous!"

He rose, dazed, and murmured:

"What is the matter? Do not treat me in this way--I love you!"

Then, in a few short, dry phrases, she signified her wishes, and decreed
the situation.

"I do not understand what you wish to say. Never speak to me of your
love, or I shall leave this studio never to return. If you forget for a
single moment this condition of my presence here, you never will see me
again."

He looked at her, crushed by this unexpected harshness; then he
understood, and murmured:

"I shall obey, Madame."

"Very well," she rejoined; "I expected that of you! Now work, for you
are long in finishing that portrait."

He took up his palette and began to paint, but his hand trembled, his
troubled eyes looked without seeing; he felt a desire to weep, so deeply
wounded was his heart.

He tried to talk to her; she barely answered him. When he attempted to
pay her some little compliment on her color, she cut him short in a tone
so brusque that he felt suddenly one of those furies of a lover that
change tenderness to hatred. Through soul and body he felt a nervous