"What does the doctor know about it? I'll destroy it for you; it won't hurt you. I learned it at school from my school-fellows. I'll destroy it in a moment."

"By incantations, eh?"

"Oh, dear no! It will smart dreadfully. But if a girl can stand it, you can."

I consented.

She lit a candle forthwith, and placed it on the table beside me. Then she produced a darning-[Pg 23]needle from somewhere (I thought of the other darning-needle), took firm hold of it, shoved it right down to the very roots of the wart, held up my hand, and placed the head of the needle in the candle flame till it was heated to a white heat. And all the time her wondrous eyes were opened round and wide, and looked straight into my eyes with irises turned downwards. It is thus that the demons of hell must look upon those whom they are roasting!

[Pg 23]

"Does it hurt?" she hissed between her teeth. She appeared to be in a state of ecstatic delight.

"It hurts, but it is not the needle."

"Well, now you can take your wart away with you."

Two days after, the calcined wart fell from my hand, leaving behind it a little speck no bigger than a lentil; and that speck is there still, and is of a whiteness which contrasts strongly with the colour of the rest of the hand. And every day I set to work writing, I must needs look at this little white spot, and when I have looked at it long, it seems to me as if her face were appearing before me in the midst of this tiny circle just as it looked then; and then that face runs through all its variations down to that last shape of all, which still startles me from my slumbers.

[Pg 24]

[Pg 24]

CHAPTER III

MY MASTERPIECE AND MY HUT

In the later stages of the painting we could converse. Indeed, conversation is necessary for completing one's study of one's subject, and prevents, besides, the constraint of sitting from becoming too tiresome.

"Have you read the poems of Petöfi?"12

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