st like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with
uneven intervals. She looked about her with the wish that the earth
might crumble into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She
was free. She advanced, looked at the paving-stones, saying to herself,
"Come! come!"

The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of her
body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground of the
oscillating square went up the walls, and that the floor dipped on end
like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging,
surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air
was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself
be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice
calling her.

"Emma! Emma!" cried Charles.

She stopped.

"Wherever are you? Come!"

The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint
with terror. She closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a
hand on her sleeve; it was Felicite.

"Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table."

And she had to go down to sit at table.

She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her napkin as
if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to
this work, counting the threads in the linen. Suddenly the remembrance
of the letter returned to her. How had she lost it? Where could she find
it? But she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent
a pretext for leaving the table. Then she became a coward; she was
afraid of Charles; he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced
these words in a strange manner:

"We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it seems."

"Who told you?" she said, shuddering.

"Who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. "Why,
Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Cafe-Francais. He has
gone on a journey, or is to go."

She gave a sob.

"What surprises you in that? He absents himself like that from time to
time for a change, and, _ma foi_, I think he's right, when one has a
fortune and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly times, has our friend.
He's a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois told me--"

He stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in. She put
back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. Charles,
without noticing his wife's color, had them brought to him, took o