leaving me thunderstruck at the
unexpected character of her thoughts.

I couldn't know that there had been during my absence a case of atrocious
murder which had affected the imagination of the whole town; and though
Therese did not read the papers (which she imagined to be full of
impieties and immoralities invented by godless men) yet if she spoke at
all with her kind, which she must have done at least in shops, she could
not have helped hearing of it. It seems that for some days people could
talk of nothing else. She returned gliding from the bedroom hermetically
sealed in her black shawl just as she had gone in, with the protruding
hand holding the lighted candle and relieved my perplexity as to her
morbid turn of mind by telling me something of the murder story in a
strange tone of indifference even while referring to its most horrible
features. "That's what carnal sin (_peche de chair_) leads to," she
commented severely and passed her tongue over her thin lips. "And then
the devil furnishes the occasion."

"I can't imagine the devil inciting me to murder you, Therese," I said,
"and I didn't like that ready way you took me for an example, as it were.
I suppose pretty near every lodger might be a potential murderer, but I
expected to be made an exception."

With the candle held a little below her face, with that face of one tone
and without relief she looked more than ever as though she had come out
of an old, cracked, smoky painting, the subject of which was altogether
beyond human conception. And she only compressed her lips.

"All right," I said, making myself comfortable on a sofa after pulling
off my boots. "I suppose any one is liable to commit murder all of a
sudden. Well, have you got many murderers in the house?"

"Yes," she said, "it's pretty good. Upstairs and downstairs," she
sighed. "God sees to it."

"And by the by, who is that grey-headed murderer in a tall hat whom I saw
shepherding two girls into this house?"

She put on a candid air in which one could detect a little of her peasant
cunning.

"Oh, yes. They are two dancing girls at the Opera, sisters, as different
from each other as I and our poor Rita. But they are both virtuous and
that gentleman, their father, is very severe with them. Very severe
indeed, poor motherless things. And it seems to be such a sinful
occupation."

"I bet you make them pay a big rent, Therese. With an occupation like
that . . ."

She looked a