"She resembles you, Thérèse, do you know it? She has a little of the sphinx, and I am not surprised at your admiration of her mysterious smile. They say that artists always create after their own nature; it was perfectly natural that you should select Van Dyck's portraits for your apprenticeship. He made women tall and slender and elegant and proud, like your figure." "You have reached the stage of compliment! Stop there, for I know that mockery will come next." "No, I am in no mood for jesting. You know well enough that I no longer jest. With you one must take everything seriously, and I follow the prescription. I simply have one depressing remark to make. It is that your dead and gone countess must be tired of being beautiful always in the same way.--An idea, Thérèse! a fantastic vision suggested by what you said just now. Listen." [Illustration: _A FANTASTIC VISION._ "_A young man, who presumably had some idea of sculpture, conceived a passion for a marble statue on a tomb. He went mad over it, and one day the poor devil raised the stone to see what was left of that lovely creature in the sarcophagus._"] "A young man, who presumably had some idea of sculpture, conceived a passion for a marble statue on a tomb. He went mad over it, and one day the poor devil raised the stone to see what was left of that lovely creature in the sarcophagus. He found there--what he was certain to find there, the idiot!--a mummy! Thereupon, his reason returned, and he kissed the mummy, saying: 'I love you better so; at least, you are something that has lived, while I was enamored of a stone that has never been aware of its own existence.'" "I don't understand," said Thérèse. "Nor do I; but it may be that in love the statue is what one builds in his head, and the mummy what he takes into his heart." Another day, he sketched Thérèse, in a pensive, melancholy attitude, in an album which she then looked through, finding there a dozen sketches of women whose insolent attitudes and shameless expressions made her blush. They were phantoms of the past which had passed through Laurent's memory, and had clung to those white pages, perhaps, in spite of him. Thérèse, without a word, tore out the leaf upon which she was given a place in that vile company, threw it into the fire, closed the album, and placed it on the table; then she sat down by the fire, put her foot on the andiron, and attempted to talk of something else. Laurent did not reply, but said to her: "You are too proud, my dear! If you had burned all the leaves that offended you and left only your own image in the album, I should have understood, and I should have said: 'You do well;' but to withdraw and leave the others there, signifies that you will never dispute possession of me with any one." "I disputed possession of you with debauchery," Thérèse replied; "I shall never do so much with any of those creatures."