to avoid that cold eye, riveted on her.

He kept staring at her, evening after evening for hours together, only
averting his eyes when she said, utterly unnerved:

"Do not look at me like that, my child!"

Then he hung down his head.

But, the moment her back was turned, she once more felt that his eyes
were upon her. Wherever she went he pursued her with his persistent
gaze.

Sometimes, when she was walking in her little garden, she suddenly
noticed him squatted on the stump of a tree as if he were lying in
wait for her; and again when she sat in front of the house mending
stockings while he was digging some cabbage-bed, he kept watching her,
as he worked, in a sly, continuous fashion.

It was in vain that she asked him:

"What's the matter with you, my boy? For the last three years you have
become very different. I don't find you the same. Tell me what ails
you, and what you are thinking of, I beg of you."

He invariably replied, in a quiet, weary tone:

"Why, nothing ails me, Aunt!"

And when she persisted, appealing to him thus:

"Ah! my child, answer me, answer me when I speak to you. If you knew
what grief you caused me, you would always answer, and you would not
look at me that way. Have you any trouble? Tell me! I'll console you!"

He went away with a tired air, murmuring:

"But there is nothing the matter with me, I assure you."

He had not grown much, having always a childish aspect, although the
features of his face were those of a man. They were, however, hard and
badly-cut. He seemed incomplete, abortive, only half-finished, and
disquieting as a mystery. He was a close, impenetrable being, in whom
there seemed always to be some active, dangerous mental travail taking
place.

Mademoiselle Source was quite conscious of all this, and she could not
from that time forth, sleep at night, so great was her anxiety.
Frightful terrors, dreadful nightmares assailed her. She shut herself
up in her own room, and barricaded the door, tortured by fear.

What was she afraid of? She could not tell.

Fear of everything, of the night, of the walls, of the shadows thrown
by the moon on the white curtains of the windows, and above all, fear
of him.

Why?

What had she to fear? Did she know what it was?

She could live this way no longer! She felt certain that a misfortune
threatened her, a frightful misfortune.

She set forth secretly one morning, and went into the city to see her
relatives. She told