“How? By your look while you are listening to me. Would you pay such attention if the story did not passionately interest you? It means that you would imagine us all three, Camille, Madame Bonnivet and myself, rather than pass from knowing us. I told you the other day, you are a born looker-on and confidant. You have been mine. You suddenly became Camille’s, and now you must become Madam de Bonnivet’s. You will receive the confidences of this woman of the world; you will receive them and believe them!” he insisted, accentuating each syllable, and he concluded: “That will be the punishment for your blasphemies. But it has just occurred to me, when do you begin the portrait of the Blue Duchess?” It must be admitted that this devil of a man was not wrong; as a matter of fact, his adventure hypnotized me with irresistible magnetism. After all, I did not leave his study till I had written with his pen on his paper a letter of acceptance to Madam Bonnivet. Besides that, I had done worse. In spite of the spasm of unreasonable and morbid jealousy which clutched my heart each time I thought of the intercourse between Jacques and his mistress, I made an appointment to begin the promised portrait, not that of the ideal dream Camille, but of the real one, who belonged to this man, who gave him her mouth, and her throat, and who surrendered herself entirely to him, and we arranged the first sitting for the day after Madam de Bonnivet’s dinner, in my studio! I repented of these two weaknesses before I was down the staircase of the house in the Place Delaborde, but not enough, alas, to return and take back my note, which Jacques had promised to deliver. My remorse increased as directly I entered my studio I saw Camille’s head upon my easel. Delicious in her phantom and unfinished life, she smiled at me from her frameless canvas. “No, you will never finish me,” she seemed to say to me with her sad eyes, her fine oval face, and her mouth framed in a melancholy smile. It is certain that neither that evening nor during the hours which followed had I the courage to touch that poor head, nor have I done so since. The enchantment was broken. I passed the ensuing hours in a state of singular agitation. I was seized again by the fever of my new-born passion, and this time I had neither the hope nor the will to struggle. I felt that this week of renunciation and seclusion with the ideal Camille had given me the only joy that this passion, which was so false and also condemned in advance, would ever give me. These joys I renounced were symbolized to me by this chimerical portrait.