ARTISTS' WIVES

PROLOGUE.

_Stretched at full length, on the great divan of a studio, cigar in
mouth, two friends--a poet and a painter--were talking together one
evening after dinner_.

_It was the hour of confidences and effusion. The lamp burned softly
beneath its shade, limiting its circle of light to the intimacy of the
conversation, leaving scarcely distinct the capricious luxury of the
vast walls, cumbered with canvases, hangings, panoplies, surmounted by a
glass roof through which the sombre blue shades of t...