Then Christine opened the door and walked into the studio. An invincible revolt, the anger of a wife buffeted at home, impelled her forward. Yes, he was with that other, he was painting her like a visionary, whom wild craving for truth had brought to the madness of the unreal; and those limbs were being gilded like the columns of a tabernacle, that trunk was becoming a star, shimmering with yellow and red, splendid and unnatural. Such strange nudity--like unto a monstrance gleaming with precious stones and intended for religious adoration--brought her anger to a climax. She had suffered too much, she would not tolerate it. And yet at first she simply showed herself despairing and supplicating. It was but the mother remonstrating with her big mad boy of an artist that spoke. ‘What are you doing there, Claude? Is it reasonable, Claude, to have such ideas? Come to bed, I beg of you, don’t stay on those steps where you will catch your death of cold!’ He did not answer; he stooped again to take some more paint on his brush, and made the figure flash with two bright strokes of vermilion. ‘Listen to me, Claude, in pity come to me--you know that I love you--you see how anxious you have made me. Come, oh! come, if you don’t want me to die of cold and waiting for you.’ With his face haggard, he did not look at her; but while he bedecked a part of the figure with carmine, he grumbled in a husky voice: ‘Just leave me alone, will you? I’m working.’ Christine remained silent for a moment. She was drawing herself erect, her eyes began to gleam with fire, rebellion inflated her gentle, charming form. Then she burst forth, with the growl of a slave driven to extremities. ‘Well, no, I won’t leave you alone! I’ve had enough of it. I’ll tell you what’s stifling me, what has been killing me ever since I have known you. Ah! that painting, yes, your painting, she’s the murderess who has poisoned my life! I had a presentiment of it on the first day; your painting frightened me as if it were a monster. I found it abominable, execrable; but then, one’s cowardly, I loved you too much not to like it also; I ended by growing accustomed to it! But later on, how I suffered!--how it tortured me! For ten years I don’t recollect having spent a day without shedding tears. No, leave me! I am easing my mind, I must speak out, since I have found strength enough to do so. For ten years I have been abandoned and crushed every day. Ah! to be nothing more to you, to feel myself cast more and more on one side, to fall to the rank of a servant; and to see that other one, that thief, place herself between you and me and clutch hold of you and triumph and insult me! For dare, yes, dare to say that she hasn’t taken possession of you, limb by limb, glided into your brain, your heart, your flesh, everywhere! She holds you like a vice, she feeds on you; in fact, she’s your wife, not I. She’s the only one you care for! Ah! the cursed wretch, the hussy!’