The lamp's rays threw a strong light on his delicate hand, on the workmanlike pose of his head, which it surrounded with a nimbus, and on a painting--a woman's head--which he was copying.
He looked superb like that, and I thought how doubly tempted Rembrandt would have been by the deep significance as well as by the chiaroscuro of this interior.
I stamped my foot.

Lampron started, and turned half around, narrowing his eyes as he peered into the darkness.
"Ah, it's you," he said.

He rose and came quickly toward me, as if to prevent me from approaching the table.
"You don't wish me to look ?" He hesitated a moment.
"After all, why not ?" he answered.
The copper plate was hardly marked with a few touches of the needle.

He turned the reflector so as to throw all its rays upon the painting.
"O Lampron, what a charming head!" It was indeed a lovely head; an Italian girl, three quarter face, painted after the manner of Leonardo, with firm but delicate touches, and lights and shades of infinite subtlety, and possessing, like all that master's portraits of women, a straightforward look that responds to the gazer's, but which he seeks to interrogate in vain.

The hair, brown with golden lights, was dressed in smooth plaits above the temples.