she thought of Armand.

"I hate him!" she cried; "I hate him!"

"You will not throw meal on me any more, or call me idiot?" he pleaded.

"No, Parpon," she said.

He kissed her on the cheek. She did not resent it. But now he drew away,
smiled wickedly at her, and said: "See, we are even now, poor Julie!"
Then he laughed, holding his little sides with huge hands. "Imbecile!"
he added, and, turning, trotted away towards the Rock of Red Pigeons.

She threw herself, face forward, in the dusty needles of the pines.

When she rose from her humiliation, her face was as one who has seen the
rags of harlequinade stripped from that mummer Life, leaving only naked
being. She had touched the limits of the endurable; her sordid little
hopes had split into fragments. But when a human soul faces upon its
past, and sees a gargoyle at every milestone where an angel should be,
and in one flash of illumination--the touch of genius to the smallest
mind--understands the pitiless comedy, there comes the still stoic
outlook.

Julie was transformed. All the possible years of her life were gathered
into the force of one dreadful moment--dreadful and wonderful. Her mean
vanity was lost behind the pale sincerity of her face--she was sincere
at last. The trivial commonness was gone from her coquetting shoulders
and drooping eyelids; and from her body had passed its flexuous
softness. She was a woman; suffering, human, paying the price.

She walked slowly the way that Parpon had gone. Looking neither to right
nor left, she climbed the long hillside, and at last reached the summit,
where, bundled in a steep corner, was the Rock of Red Pigeons. As
she emerged from the pines, she stood for a moment, and leaned with
outstretched hand against a tree, looking into the sunlight. Slowly her
eyes shifted from the Rock to the great ravine, to whose farther side
the sun was giving bastions of gold. She was quiet. Presently she
stepped into the light and came softly to the Rock. She walked slowly
round it as though looking for some one. At the lowest side of the Rock,
rude narrow hollows were cut for the feet. With a singular ease she
climbed to the top of it. It had a kind of hollow, in which was a rude
seat, carved out of the stone. Seeing this, a set look came to her face:
she was thinking of Parpon, the master of this place. Her business was
with him.

She got down slowly, and came over to the edge of the precipice.
Steadying herself against a sap