cs were there! She closed
her eyes as if the light dazzled them. She felt a dizziness in her
conscience; but immediately her whole being rose in revolt against her,
and it seemed to her as if her heart in its indignation rose to her
throat. In an instant the honor of her whole life stood erect between
her hand and that key. Her upright, unselfish, devoted past, twenty
years of resistance to the evil counsels and the corruption of that foul
quarter, twenty years of scorn for theft, twenty years in which her
pocket had not held back a sou from her employers, twenty years of
indifference to gain, twenty years in which temptation had never come
near her, her long maintained and natural virtue, mademoiselle's
confidence in her--all these things came to her mind in a single
instant. Her youthful years clung to her and took possession of her.
From her family, from the memory of her parents, from the unsullied
reputation of her wretched name, from the dead from whom she was
descended, there arose a murmur as of guardian angels hovering about
her. For one second she was saved.

And then, insensibly, evil thoughts glided one by one into her brain.
She sought for subjects of bitterness, for excuses for ingratitude to
her mistress. She compared with her own wages the wages of which the
other maids in the house boasted vaingloriously. She concluded that
mademoiselle was very fortunate to have her in her service, and that she
should have increased her wages more since she had been with her.

"And then," she suddenly asked herself, "why does she leave the key in
her box?" And she began to reflect thereupon that the money in the box
was not used for living expenses, but had been laid aside by
mademoiselle to buy a velvet dress for a goddaughter.--"Sleeping
money," she said to herself. She marshaled her reasons with
precipitation, as if to make it impossible to discuss them. "And then,
it's only for once. She would lend them to me if I asked her. And I will
return them."

She put out her hand and turned the key. She stopped; it seemed to her
that the intense silence round about was listening to her and looking at
her. She raised her eyes: the mirror threw back her face at her. Before
that face, her own, she was afraid; she recoiled in terror and shame as
if before the face of her crime: it was a thief's head that she had upon
her shoulders!

She fled into the corridor. Suddenly she turned upon her heel, went
straight to the box, tu