? You are going to leave us after
I have become so accustomed to you?'

"I glanced at Miss Harriet out of the corner of my eye. Her countenance
did not change in the least. But Celeste, the little servant, looked up
at me. She was a fat girl, of about eighteen years of age, rosy, fresh,
as strong as a horse, and possessing the rare attribute of cleanliness. I
had kissed her at odd times in out-of-the-way corners, after the manner
of travellers--nothing more.

"The dinner being at length over, I went to smoke my pipe under the apple
trees, walking up and down from one end of the enclosure to the other.
All the reflections which I had made during the day, the strange
discovery of the morning, that passionate and grotesque attachment for
me, the recollections which that revelation had suddenly called up,
recollections at once charming and perplexing, perhaps also that look
which the servant had cast on me at the announcement of my
departure--all these things, mixed up and combined, put me now in a
reckless humor, gave me a tickling sensation of kisses on the lips and in
my veins a something which urged me on to commit some folly.

"Night was coming on, casting its dark shadows under the trees, when I
descried Celeste, who had gone to fasten up the poultry yard at the other
end of the enclosure. I darted toward her, running so noiselessly that
she heard nothing, and as she got up from closing the small trapdoor by
which the chickens got in and out, I clasped her in my arms and rained on
her coarse, fat face a shower of kisses. She struggled, laughing all the
time, as she was accustomed to do in such circumstances. Why did I
suddenly loose my grip of her? Why did I at once experience a shock? What
was it that I heard behind me?

"It was Miss Harriet, who had come upon us, who had seen us and who stood
in front of us motionless as a spectre. Then she disappeared in the
darkness.

"I was ashamed, embarrassed, more desperate at having been thus surprised
by her than if she had caught me committing some criminal act.

"I slept badly that night. I was completely unnerved and haunted by sad
thoughts. I seemed to hear loud weeping, but in this I was no doubt
deceived. Moreover, I thought several times that I heard some one walking
up and down in the house and opening the hall door.

"Toward morning I was overcome by fatigue and fell asleep. I got up late
and did not go downstairs until the late breakfast, being still in a
b