“Run away....”
“From Eduard. It’s a dog’s life. He’s a miser. He’s always bullying me, reproaching me, saying that I spend too much money ... that my parents, yes, that you ... that you spend too much money! He’s mad with meanness. He locks up my linen-cupboard ... because I wear too many chemises and send too many things to the wash and employ too expensive a laundress! He grudges me more than one chemise a week! He’s mad ... he’s gone mad! For a whole week, I put on three fresh chemises a day, to annoy him, and I threw all those chemises into his dirty-clothes-basket, to annoy him! He found them this morning! I told him that I was the mistress of my own chemises and that I should wear just as many as I pleased. Then he flew into a passion and he struck me....”
“I flung all my chemises at his head!” she screamed, hysterically. “And he flung them all back. The room was one vast chemise!... Oh, it’s terrible.... It’s a dog’s life. I won’t go back to him.... Papa, I needn’t go back to him, need I?”
“Emilie, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
She threw herself upon her father, crushed herself against the orders on his breast:
“Oh, Papa, I am so unhappy! I can’t stand any more of it: I am so unhappy!”
Marianne came in. She was looking very pretty: a delicate, fair little society-girl, in her low-necked white frock. She heard Emilie’s last words, saw her pale, thin, dishevelled:
“Emilietje!... Sissy!... What is it?” she exclaimed. “Oh, that horrid man! It’s that horrid man!”
Bertha shut her eyes: