"Don't touch me," said Emilia.

Nothing exasperates certain natures so much as the effort of the visibly
weak to intimidate them.

"I shall not touch you?" Mr. Pericles sneered. "Zen, why are you here?"

"I came to my friend," was Emilia's reply.

"Your friend! He is not ze friend of a couac-couac. Once, if you please:
but now" (Mr. Pericles shrugged), "now you are like ze rest of women. You
are game. Come to me."

He caught once more at her hand, which she lifted; then at her elbow.

"Will you touch me when I tell you not to?"

There was the soft line of an involuntary frown over her white face, and
as he held her arm from the doubled elbow, with her clenched hand aloft,
she appeared ready to strike a tragic blow.

Anger and every other sentiment vanished from Mr. Pericles in the
rapturous contemplation of her admirable artistic pose.

"Mon Dieu! and wiz a voice!" he exclaimed, dashing his fist in a delirium
of forgetfulness against the one plastered lock of hair on his shining
head. "Little fool! little dam fool!--zat might have been"--(Mr. Pericles
figured in air with his fingers to signify the exaltation she was to have
attained)--"Mon Dieu! and look at you! Did I not warn you? non a vero?
Did I not say 'Ruin, ruin, if you go so? For a man!--a voice! You will
not come to me? Zen, hear! you shall go to old Belloni. I do not want
you, my pretty dear. Woman is a trouble, a drug. You shall go to old
Belloni; and, crack! if ze voice will come back to a whip,--bravo, old
Belloni!"

Mr. Pericles turned to reach down his hat from a peg. At the same instant
Emilia quitted the room.

Dusk was deepening the yellow atmosphere, and the crowd was now steadily
flowing in one direction. The bereaved creature went with the stream,
glad to be surrounded and unseen, till it struck her, at last, that she
was moving homeward. She stopped with a pang of grief, turned, and met
all those people to whom the fireside was a beacon. For some time she
bore against the pressure, but her loneliness overwhelmed her. None
seemed to go her way. For a refuge, she turned into one of the city side
streets, where she was quite alone. Unhappily, the street was of no
length, and she soon came to the end of it. There was the choice of
retracing her steps, or entering a strange street; and while she
hesitated a troop of sheep went by, that made a piteous noise. She
followed them, thinking curiously of the something broken that appeared
to b