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Rh all the women converged radiantly upon his painted face, surrounding it with a halo of ecstasies.

"Ah! I should so like to have my portrait painted by Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton, cried Mme. de Rambure; "I would give anything to enjoy such happiness.

"Alas! Madame, "answered Kimberly, "since the sorrowful and sublime event which I have related, Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton has been unwilling to paint human faces, however charming they may be; he paints only souls."

And he is right! I should so like to be painted as a soul!"

"Of what sex?" asked Maurice Fernancourt, in a slightly sarcastic tone, visibly jealous of Kimberly's success.

The latter said, simply:

"Souls have no sex, my dear Maurice. They have ". ..

"Hair on their paws, said Victor Charrigaud, in a very low voice, so as to be heard only by the psychological novelist, to whom he was just then offering a cigar.

And, dragging him into the smoking-room, he whispered:

"Ah! old man! I wish I could shout the most filthy things, at the top of my voice, in the faces of all these people. I have enough of their souls, of their green and perverse loves, of their magic