The art gallery

Oskar Serti and Catherine de Sélys were walking in the street when they were caught in a violent storm and dived into the first building they came to, out of the wind and rain.
Unfortunately, on realizing they had burst into a museum, they both felt deeply disturbed by this unexpected turn of events which immediately reminded both of them of their intellectual guide, the painter Pierre Lipart, who had died six months previously without ever managing to exhibit a single painting. Since his death, neither had ever again set foot in an exhibition hall, bearing this deep grudge against all the works which in their eyes were taking the place of Lipart's.
However, as the rain poured down still harder, they walked into the rooms to see the paintings on display.

When he leant up against the picture rail that there used to be here, and although he felt no longer capable of offering Catherine anything at all, Serti tried his utmost to cling onto the hope that she might continue to show at least some slight consideration for him; he stood glued to the wall following on from the pictures on display, and held his breath so as to be as flat as he possibly could.
Serti thought that this way he might give Catherine, if only for a fraction of a second, a chance to look at him like one of the pictures of the exhibition that had stirred such emotions in her...

As soon as he stopped here, Serti felt a stabbing pain at the top of his skull; but he was not unduly surprised, apprehensive as he was of seeing a painting again.
This pain came back a regular intervals, then continued at an increasingly infernal rate that had him wondering if a hole had not been drilled into his skull.
Gradually, as this hammering went on, the images contained in the paintings became indelibly etched into his innermost being. They took on such a hallucinating perspective, transparent quality and colour that they made even Lipart's work pale into insignificance for him.Serti felt the same hammering at this spot. Placing his hand where it hurt, he found his skull was soaked and instantly saw what had caused this disturbing neuralgia: the glass roof had sprung a leak in the storm, with an endless stream of droplets dripping down onto his head.
Hoping to pursue his visit of the exhibition with the same sharpness, Serti decided to stay put for a moment longer, to get the most out of this state of shock which the raindrops were causing in him.

When he stopped here, Serti was greatly disappointed to notice how the drops of water which he wanted to drip onto Catherine's head were missing their target and landing pathetically on her blouse.
But when he saw how despite the lack of knocks on the skull, Catherine still managed to tremble in front of the paintings, Serti called himself seriously into question:
— How could Catherine succumb to the magic of a painting without anyone to help her?
— What need could Catherine still have for him when she hadn't needed him to get a feel for the beauty of things?
Abandoning any hopes of taking Lipart's place, Serti felt himself plunged into a state of utter confusion.

Catherine de Sélys came here to have a sly glance at the exhibition. She hadn't imagined it like this at all, but she actually felt drawn to the paintings she saw. After a while, to her surprise she even felt in their presence something approaching serenity which in a stroke removed her painful memory of Pierre Lipart.
It then occurred to Catherine that, for the first time since Lipart's death, she was visiting an exhibition without having his inevitable comments rammed down her throat, and noting this with no hint of regret, she at last realized – after years of open-mouthed admiration – how futile all this chatter was, compared with Oskar's wonderful silences.

As soon as she reached this point, Catherine de Sélys saw her blouse covered with tiny spots of the same brownish colour which Lipart used for most of his compositions. Catherine of course suspected that these spots came from the drops of water falling from the rusty frame of the glass roof in the violent storm. However, she couldn't help seeing this phenomenon as the sign of posthumous revenge on the part of Lipart, who was taking it out on her for rejecting him by daubing paint on her like one of his pictures.
Not daring to admit her agitation to Oskar, Catherine tried to dismiss her dark thoughts by concentrating on the paintings before her. She looked at them with such intensity that she managed to find in their presence a degree of comfort that made her wish to see the other paintings in the exhibition.

While crossing the room, Catherine de Sélys suddenly saw Oskar's streaming face. Thinking the poor fellow under the strain of some severe emotional shock, she supposed he had not yet got over Pierre Lipart's death, and finding him in such a state abruptly brought herself into question:
— Would she ever dare to confess to him this relieved feeling she had just had regarding Lipart's death?
— Mightn't Oskar be disappointed by her attitude and become estranged from her?
Catherine felt herself plunged into a state of utter confusion.

On resuming his visit, Oskar Serti noticed at the far end of the room a small puddle, indicating another leak in the glass roof. He conceived forthwith the idea of taking Catherine there without her knowing why, and submitting her too to the drip test. Serti feverishly realized that if ever he could get her to share the intense pictorial emotions he had just experienced, this would be a tremendous opportunity for him to prove to himself that Pierre Lipart – whose intellectual pretensions he had always in fact found rather irritating – was not the only guardian of Catherine's initiation into art.