ied, the most unexpected and the most overwhelming
accusations drawn from the intimate relations of their daily life,
reproaching her husband for all his actions, all his ideas, all his
habits, all his enterprises, all his efforts, for his life from the time
of their marriage up to the present time.

He strove to check her, to calm her and stammered:

"But, my dear, it is useless--before monsieur. We are making ourselves
ridiculous. This does not interest monsieur."

And he cast mournful glances into the thicket as though he sought to
sound its peaceful and mysterious depths, in order to flee thither, to
escape and hide from all eyes, and from time to time he uttered a fresh
scream, a prolonged and shrill "tuituit." I took this to be a nervous
affection.

The young woman, suddenly turning towards me: and changing her tone with
singular rapidity, said:

"If monsieur will kindly allow us, we will accompany him on the road, so
as not to lose our way again, and be obliged, possibly, to sleep in the
wood."

I bowed. She took my arm and began to talk about a thousand things
--about herself, her life, her family, her business. They were glovers
in the Rue, Saint-Lazare.

Her husband walked beside her, casting wild glances into the thick wood
and screaming "tuituit" every few moments.

At last I inquired:

"Why do you scream like that?"

"I have lost my poor dog," he replied in a tone of discouragement and
despair.

"How is that--you have lost your dog?"

"Yes. He was just a year old. He had never been outside the shop. I
wanted to take him to have a run in the woods. He had never seen the
grass nor the leaves and he was almost wild. He began to run about and
bark and he disappeared in the wood. I must also add that he was greatly
afraid of the train. That may have driven him mad. I kept on calling
him, but he has not come back. He will die of hunger in there."

Without turning towards her husband, the young woman said:

"If you had left his chain on, it would not have happened. When people
are as stupid as you are they do not keep a dog."

"But, my dear, it was you--" he murmured timidly.

She stopped short, and looking into his eyes as if she were going
to tear them out, she began again to cast in his face innumerable
reproaches.

It was growing dark. The cloud of vapor that covers the country at dusk
was slowly rising and there was a poetry in the air, induced by the
peculiar and enchanting freshness o