“I must go to Saint-Roch one of these mornings,” said she. “An occupation gone always leaves a void behind it.”
And, on the pale face of this late child, born of parents too old, there appeared the unhealthy regret of another existence, dreamed of once upon a time, in the land of chimeras. She could conceal nothing, everything was reflected in her face, beneath her skin, which had the softness and the transparency accompanying an attack of chlorosis. Then, she gave way to her feelings, and caught hold of Octave’s hands with a familiar gesture.
“Ah! let me thank you for having brought me this book! Come to-morrow after lunch. I will return it to you and tell you the effect that it produced on me. It will be amusing, will it not?”
On leaving her, Octave thought that she was funny all the same. She was beginning to interest him, he contemplated speaking to Pichon so as to make him rouse her up a bit; for the little woman, most decidedly, only wanted a shaking. It so happened that on the morrow he came across the clerk just as he was going off, and he accompanied him part of the way, at the risk of being late himself at “The Ladies’ Paradise.” But Pichon seemed to him to be even more benumbed than his wife, full of manias in their early stage, and entirely occupied with the dread of getting mud on his shoes in wet weather. He walked on his toes, and continually talked of the second head-clerk of his office. Octave, who was only animated by fraternal intentions in the matter, ended by leaving him in the Rue Saint-Honoré, after advising him to take Marie to the theatre frequently.
“Whatever for?” asked Pichon in amazement.
“Because it is good for women. It makes them nicer.”
“Ah! you really think so?”
He promised to give the matter his attention, and crossed the street, eyeing the cabs with terror, the only thing in life which worried him being the fear of getting splashed.
At lunch-time, Octave knocked at the Pichons’ door for the book. Marie was reading, her elbows on the table, her hands buried in her dishevelled hair. She had just eaten an egg cooked in a tin pan which was lying in the centre of the hastily laid table without any cloth. Lilitte, forgotten on the floor, was sleeping with her nose on the pieces of a plate which she had no doubt broken.
“Well?”