d
not have recognised the place. He, stupefied, watched her trotting
to and fro, twisting about and singing as she went. Was this then the
lazybones who had such dreadful headaches at the least bit of work? But
she laughed; at headwork, yes; but exertion with her hands and feet did
her good, seemed to straighten her like a young sapling. She confessed,
even as she would have confessed some depraved taste, her liking for
lowly household cares; a liking which had greatly worried her mother,
whose educational ideal consisted of accomplishments, and who would
have made her a governess with soft hands, touching nothing vulgar. How
Christine had been chided indeed whenever she was caught, as a little
girl, sweeping, dusting, and playing delightedly at being cook! Even
nowadays, if she had been able to indulge in a bout with the dust at
Madame Vanzade's, she would have felt less bored. But what would they
have said to that? She would no longer have been considered a lady. And
so she came to satisfy her longings at the Quai de Bourbon, panting with
the exercise, all aglow, her eyes glistening with a woman's delight at
biting into forbidden fruit.

Claude by this time grew conscious of having a woman's care around him.
In order to make her sit down and chat quietly, he would ask her now and
then to sew a torn cuff or coat-tail. She herself had offered to look
over his linen; but it was no longer with the ardour of a housewife,
eager to be up and doing. First of all, she hardly knew how to work; she
held her needle like a girl brought up in contempt of sewing. Besides,
the enforced quiescence and the attention that had to be given to
such work, the small stitches which had to be looked to one by one,
exasperated her. Thus the studio was bright with cleanliness like a
drawing-room, but Claude himself remained in rags, and they both joked
about it, thinking it great fun.

How happy were those months that they spent together, those four months
of frost and rain whiled away in the studio, where the red-hot stove
roared like an organ-pipe! The winter seemed to isolate them from the
world still more. When the snow covered the adjacent roofs, when the
sparrows fluttered against the window, they smiled at feeling warm and
cosy, at being lost, as it were, amidst the great silent city. But
they did not always confine themselves to that one little nook, for she
allowed him at last to see her home. For a long while she had insisted
upon go