sh haste,
fearing lest she should not have the time to burn them, she was making
them up into bundles, intending to hide them, and send them afterward
to her grandmother, when the sudden flare of the candle, lighting up
the room, caused her to stop short in an attitude of surprise and
resistance.

"You rob me; you assassinate me!" repeated Pascal furiously.

She still held one of the bundles in her bare arms. He wished to take
it away from her, but she pressed it to her with all her strength,
obstinately resolved upon her work of destruction, without showing
confusion or repentance, like a combatant who has right upon his side.
Then, madly, blindly, he threw himself upon her, and they struggled
together. He clutched her bare flesh so that he hurt her.

"Kill me!" she gasped. "Kill me, or I shall destroy everything!"

He held her close to him, with so rough a grasp that she could scarcely
breathe, crying:

"When a child steals, it is punished!"

A few drops of blood appeared and trickled down her rounded shoulder,
where an abrasion had cut the delicate satin skin. And, on the instant,
seeing her so breathless, so divine, in her virginal slender height,
with her tapering limbs, her supple arms, her slim body with its
slender, firm throat, he released her. By a last effort he tore the
package from her.

"And you shall help me to put them all up there again, by Heaven! Come
here: begin by arranging them on the table. Obey me, do you hear?"

"Yes, master!"

She approached, and helped him to arrange the papers, subjugated,
crushed by this masculine grasp, which had entered into her flesh, as it
were. The candle which flared up in the heavy night air, lighted them;
and the distant rolling of the thunder still continued, the window
facing the storm seeming on fire.

V.

For an instant Pascal looked at the papers, the heap of which seemed
enormous, lying thus in disorder on the long table that stood in the
middle of the room. In the confusion several of the blue paper envelopes
had burst open, and their contents had fallen out--letters, newspaper
clippings, documents on stamped paper, and manuscript notes.

He was already mechanically beginning to seek out the names written on
the envelopes in large characters, to classify the packages again, when,
with an abrupt gesture, he emerged from the somber meditation into which
he had fallen. And turning to Clotilde who stood waiting, pale, silent,
and erect, he sa