“Perhaps you are right, wise Minerva. It is true that there are days when my life rings terribly hollow. I am conscious of abysses, profound chasms in it. Everything that I throw in to fill it up disappears. My finest enthusiasms of the artist are engulfed there and die each time in a sigh. And then I think of marriage. A husband; children--a swarm of children, who would roll about the studio; a nest to look after for them all; the satisfaction of that physical activity which is lacking in our existences of artists; regular occupations; high spirits, songs, innocent gaieties, which would oblige you to play instead of thinking in the air, in the dark--to laugh at a wound to one’s self-love, to be only a contented mother on the day when the public should see you as a worn-out, exhausted artist.” And before this tender vision the girl’s beauty took on an expression which Paul had never seen in it before, an expression which gripped his whole being, and gave him a mad longing to carry off in his arms that beautiful wild bird, dreaming of the home-cote, to protect and shelter it in the sure love of an honest man. She, without looking at him, continued: “I am not so erratic as I appear; don’t think it. Ask my good godmother if, when she sent me to boarding-school, I did not observe the rules. But what a muddle in my life afterward. If you knew what sort of an early youth I had; how precocious an experience tarnished my mind, in the head of the little girl I was, what a confusion of the permitted and the forbidden, of reason and folly! Art alone, extolled and discussed, stood out boldly from among it all, and I took refuge in it. That is perhaps why I shall never be anything but an artist, a woman apart from others, a poor Amazon with heart imprisoned in her iron cuirass, launched into the conflict like a man, and as a man condemned to live and die.” Why did he not say to her, at this: “Beauteous lady-warrior, lay down your arms, resume the flowing robe and the graces of the woman’s sphere. I love you! Marry me, I implore you, and win happiness both for yourself and for me.” Ah, there it is! He was afraid lest the other--you know him, the man who was to have come to dinner that evening and who remained between them despite his absence--should hear him speak thus and be in a position to jest at or to pity him for that fine outburst. “In any case, I firmly swear one thing,” she resumed, “and it is that if ever I have a daughter, I will try to make a true woman of her, and not a poor lonely creature like myself. Oh! you know, my fairy, it is not for you that I say that. You have always been kind to your demon, full of attentions and tenderness. But just see how pretty she is, how young she looks this evening.”