toss of her head.

"Poor Benoit," responded Annette gently. Her voice was always sweet. One
would never have known that Benoit was a drunken idler.

"Come in. I will give you the meal from my own. Then it will cost you
nothing," said Julie, with an air.

"Thank you, Julie, but I would rather pay."

"I do not sell my meal," answered Julie. "What's a few pounds of meal to
the wife of Farette? I will get it for you. Come in, Annette."

She turned towards the door, then stopped all at once. There was the
oatmeal which she had thrown at Parpon, the basin, and the poker. She
wished she had not asked Annette in. But in some things she had a quick
wit, and she hurried to say: "It was that yellow cat of Parpon's. It
spilt the meal, and I went at it with the poker."

Perhaps Annette believed her. She did not think about it one way or the
other; her mind was with the sick Benoit. She nodded and said nothing,
hoping that the flax-seed would be got at once. But when she saw that
Julie expected an answer, she said: "Cecilia, my little girl, has a
black cat-so handsome. It came from the house of the poor Seigneur de la
Riviere a year ago. We took it back, but it would not stay."

Annette spoke simply and frankly, but her words cut like a knife.

Julie responded, with a click of malice: "Look out that the black cat
doesn't kill the dear Cecilia." Annette started, but she did not believe
that cats sucked the life from children's lungs, and she replied calmly:
"I am not afraid; the good God keeps my child." She then got up and came
to Julie, and said: "It is a pity, Julie, that you have not a child. A
child makes all right."

Julie was wild to say a fierce thing, for it seemed that Annette was
setting off Benoit against Farette; but the next moment she grew hot,
her eyes smarted, and there was a hint of trouble at her throat. She had
lived very fast in the last few hours, and it was telling on her. She
could not rule herself--she could not play a part so well as she wished.
She had not before felt the thing that gave a new pulse to her body and
a joyful pain at her breasts. Her eyes got thickly blurred so that she
could not see Annette, and, without a word, she hurried to get the
meal. She was silent when she came back. She put the meal into Annette's
hands. She felt that she would like to talk of Armand. She knew now
there was no evil thought in Annette. She did not like her more for
that, but she felt she must talk, and Annet