pect me to tell him the number of bottles, or
to guess what he paid for them."

My father and mother were left alone and sat down for a moment; then my
father said: "Well, shall we go up to bed?"

"As you wish, dear, though I don't feel in the least like sleeping. I
don't know why; it can't be the coffee-ice--it wasn't strong enough to
keep me awake like this. But I see a light in the servants' hall: poor
Francoise has been sitting up for me, so I will get her to unhook me
while you go and undress."

My mother opened the latticed door which led from the hall to the
staircase. Presently I heard her coming upstairs to close her window. I
went quietly into the passage; my heart was beating so violently that I
could hardly move, but at least it was throbbing no longer with anxiety,
but with terror and with joy. I saw in the well of the stair a light
coming upwards, from Mamma's candle. Then I saw Mamma herself: I threw
myself upon her. For an instant she looked at me in astonishment, not
realising what could have happened. Then her face assumed an expression
of anger. She said not a single word to me; and, for that matter, I used
to go for days on end without being spoken to, for far less offences
than this. A single word from Mamma would have been an admission that
further intercourse with me was within the bounds of possibility,
and that might perhaps have appeared to me more terrible still, as
indicating that, with such a punishment as was in store for me, mere
silence, and even anger, were relatively puerile.

A word from her then would have implied the false calm in which one
converses with a servant to whom one has just decided to give notice;
the kiss one bestows on a son who is being packed off to enlist, which
would have been denied him if it had merely been a matter of being
angry with him for a few days. But she heard my father coming from the
dressing-room, where he had gone to take off his clothes, and, to avoid
the 'scene' which he would make if he saw me, she said, in a voice
half-stifled by her anger: "Run away at once. Don't let your father see
you standing there like a crazy jane!"

But I begged her again to "Come and say good night to me!" terrified as
I saw the light from my father's candle already creeping up the wall,
but also making use of his approach as a means of blackmail, in the hope
that my mother, not wishing him to find me there, as find me he must
if she continued to hold out, would give