at last, one day, when the farmer was having
breakfast by himself in the kitchen, she said to him, with some
embarrassment, that she wished to speak to him particularly. He raised
his head in surprise, with both his hands on the table, holding his
knife, with its point in the air, in one, and a piece of bread in the
other, and he looked fixedly at the girl, who felt uncomfortable under
his gaze, but asked for a week's holiday, so that she might get away, as
she was not very well. He acceded to her request immediately, and then
added, in some embarrassment, himself:

"When you come back, I shall have something to say to you, myself."

PART III

The child was nearly eight months old, and she did not know it again. It
had grown rosy and chubby all over like a little bundle of living fat.
She threw herself onto it as if it had been some prey, and kissed it so
violently that it began to scream with terror, and then she began to cry
herself, because it did not know her, and stretched out its arms to its
nurse, as soon as it saw her. But the next day, it began to get used to
her, and laughed when it saw her, and she took it into the fields and
ran about excitedly with it, and sat down under the shade of the trees,
and then, for the first time in her life, she opened her heart to
somebody, and told him her troubles, how hard her work was, her
anxieties and her hopes, and she quite tired the child with the violence
of her caresses.

She took the greatest pleasure in handling it, in washing and dressing
it, for it seemed to her that all this was the confirmation of her
maternity, and she would look at it, almost feeling surprised that it
was hers, and she used to say to herself in a low voice, as she danced
it in her arms: "It is my baby, it is my baby."

She cried all the way home as she returned to the farm, and had scarcely
got in, before her master called her into his room, and she went,
feeling astonished and nervous, without knowing why.

"Sit down there," he said. She sat down, and for some moments they
remained side by side, in some embarrassment, with their arms hanging at
their sides, as if they did not know what to do with them, and looking
each other in the face, after the manner of peasants.

The farmer, a stout, jovial, obstinate man of forty-five, who had lost
two wives, evidently felt embarrassed, which was very unusual with him,
but at last he made up his mind, and began to speak vaguely, hesitating
a l