But suddenly a shiver rippled over the girl’s satiny skin. Perhaps she had felt the weight of that gaze thus mentally dissecting her. She opened her eyes very wide and uttered a cry. ‘Ah! great heavens!’ Sudden terror paralysed her at the sight of that strange room, and that young man crouching in his shirt-sleeves in front of her and devouring her with his eyes. Flushing hotly, she impulsively pulled up the counterpane. ‘Well, what’s the matter?’ cried Claude, angrily, his crayon suspended in mid-air; ‘what wasp has stung you now?’ He, whose knowledge of womankind was largely limited to professional models, was at a loss to understand the girl’s action. She neither spoke nor stirred, but remained with the counterpane tightly wrapped round her throat, her body almost doubled up, and scarcely showing an outline beneath her coverings. ‘I won’t eat you, will I?’ urged Claude. ‘Come, just lie as you were, there’s a good girl.’ Again she blushed to her very ears. At last she stammered, ‘Oh, no, monsieur, no--pray!’ But he began to lose his temper altogether. One of the angry fits to which he was subject was coming upon him. He thought her obstinacy stupid. And as in response to his urgent requests she only began to sob, he quite lost his head in despair before his sketch, thinking that he would never be able to finish it, and would thus lose a capital study for his picture. ‘Well, you won’t, eh? But it’s idiotic. What do you take me for? Have I annoyed you at all? You know I haven’t. Besides, listen, it is very unkind of you to refuse me this service, because, after all, I sheltered you--I gave up my bed to you.’ She only continued to cry, with her head buried in the pillow. ‘I assure you that I am very much in want of this sketch, else I wouldn’t worry you.’ He grew surprised at the girl’s abundant tears, and ashamed at having been so rough with her, so he held his tongue at last, feeling embarrassed, and wishing too that she might have time to recover a bit. Then he began again, in a very gentle tone: ‘Well, as it annoys you, let’s say no more about it. But if you only knew. I’ve got a figure in my picture yonder which doesn’t make head-way at all, and you were just in the very note. As for me, when it’s a question of painting, I’d kill father and mother, you know. Well, you’ll excuse me, won’t you? And if you’d like me to be very nice, you’d just give me a few minutes more. No, no; keep quiet as you are; I only want the head--nothing but the head. If I could finish that, it would be all right. Really now, be kind; put your arm as it was before, and I shall be very grateful to you--grateful all my life long.’