that
confounded country!

October came with its rain-laden sky. On one of the first wet evenings
Claude flew into a passion because dinner was not ready. He turned that
goose of a Melie out of the house and clouted Jacques, who got between
his legs. Whereupon, Christine, crying, kissed him and said:

'Let's go, oh, let us go back to Paris.'

He disengaged himself, and cried in an angry voice: 'What, again! Never!
do you hear me?'

'Do it for my sake,' she said, warmly. 'It's I who ask it of you, it's I
that you'll please.'

'Why, are you tired of being here, then?'

'Yes, I shall die if we stay here much longer; and, besides I want you
to work. I feel quite certain that your place is there. It would be a
crime for you to bury yourself here any longer.'

'No, leave me!'

He was quivering. On the horizon Paris was calling him, the Paris of
winter-tide which was being lighted up once more. He thought he could
hear from where he stood the great efforts that his comrades were
making, and, in fancy, he returned thither in order that they might not
triumph without him, in order that he might become their chief again,
since not one of them had strength or pride enough to be such. And amid
this hallucination, amid the desire he felt to hasten to Paris, he
yet persisted in refusing to do so, from a spirit of involuntary
contradiction, which arose, though he could not account for it, from his
very entrails. Was it the fear with which the bravest quivers, the mute
struggle of happiness seeking to resist the fatality of destiny?

'Listen,' said Christine, excitedly. 'I shall get our boxes ready, and
take you away.'

Five days later, after packing and sending their chattels to the
railway, they started for Paris.

Claude was already on the road with little Jacques, when Christine
fancied that she had forgotten something. She returned alone to the
house; and finding it quite bare and empty, she burst out crying. It
seemed as if something were being torn from her, as if she were leaving
something of herself behind--what, she could not say. How willingly
would she have remained! how ardent was her wish to live there
always--she who had just insisted on that departure, that return to the
city of passion where she scented the presence of a rival. However, she
continued searching for what she lacked, and in front of the kitchen she
ended by plucking a rose, a last rose, which the cold was turning brown.
And then she slowly c