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He had no other ambition than to resemble him, and it was without trying to be that he was different from the others. They worked not for glory, but to live." "They were right," said Choulette. "Nothing is better than to work for a living." "The desire to attain fame," continued Dechartre, "did not trouble them.
I was coming from it to-night when I had the double pleasure of finding at the station Miss Bell, who had gone there to find her Ghiberti bell, and you, Madame, who were talking with a friend from Paris." He had the idea that it would be disagreeable to her to hear him speak of that meeting. He looked around the table, and saw the expression of anxious surprise which Dechartre could not restrain.
And, finally, I shall go to Venice." "You will do well. Venice suggests the peace of the Sabbath-day in the grand week of creative and divine Italy." "Your friend Dechartre talked very prettily to me of Venice, of the atmosphere of Venice, which sows pearls." "Yes, at Venice the sky is a colorist. Florence inspires the mind.
I shall be every day, at three o'clock, at our home, in the Rue Spontini." At this moment, as she made a motion with her head to receive the cloak, she saw Dechartre with his hand on the knob of the door. He had heard. He looked at her with all the reproach and suffering that human eyes can contain. Then he went into the dim corridor.
She looked at the figure again, did not understand, and asked: "Is it something very bad? How can a thing shown on the portal of a church be so difficult to tell here?" Suddenly an anxiety came to her: "What will Monsieur and Madame Fusellier think of me?" Then, discovering on the wall a medallion wherein Dechartre had modelled the profile of a girl, amusing and vicious: "What is that?"
"Ah! here comes Monsieur Dechartre," said the good Madame Marmet. He had looked for them in the church, before the tabernacle. He should have recalled the irresistible attraction which Donatello's St. George held for Miss Bell. He too admired that famous figure. But he retained a particular friendship for St. Mark, rustic and frank, whom they could see in his niche at the left.
Dechartre resumed the rhymes of the canticle: "At the hour when our mind, a greater stranger to the flesh; and less under the obsession of thoughts, is almost divine in its visions, . . . ." She approached beside the boxwood hedge, holding a parasol and dressed in a straw-colored gown. The faint sunlight of winter enveloped her in pale gold. Dechartre greeted her joyfully.
He took his luggage and went out. She saw his long, rustic form disappear behind the bushes of the garden. In the afternoon she went to San Marco, where Dechartre was waiting for her. She desired yet she feared to see him again so soon. She felt an anguish which an unknown sentiment, profoundly soft, appeased.
Miss Bell hesitated a moment. Then she blushed and arose. She had been a little shocked. Saturday, at four o'clock, Therese went, as she had promised, to the gate of the English cemetery. There she found Dechartre. He was serious and agitated; he spoke little. She was glad he did not display his joy. He led her by the deserted walls of the gardens to a narrow street which she did not know.
Then she said to Dechartre, who was looking at her silently: "That is amazing! I understand now why the Princess Seniavine, this winter, asked my father to advise her about buying horses."
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