quently she selected Monday,
the day allowed her by Madame Vanzade in order that she might have a
walk in the fresh, open air of the Bois de Boulogne. She had to be back
home by eleven, and she walked the whole way very quickly, coming in all
aglow from the run, for it was a long stretch from Passy to the Quai de
Bourbon. During four winter months, from October to February, she came
in this fashion, now in drenching rain, now among the mists from the
Seine, now in the pale sunlight that threw a little warmth over the
quays. Indeed, after the first month, she at times arrived unexpectedly,
taking advantage of some errand in town to look in, and then she could
only stay for a couple of minutes; they had barely had time enough to
say 'How do you do?' when she was already scampering down the stairs
again, exclaiming 'Good-bye.'

And now Claude learned to know Christine. With his everlasting mistrust
of woman a suspicion had remained to him, the suspicion of some love
adventure in the provinces; but the girl's soft eyes and bright laughter
had carried all before them; he felt that she was as innocent as a big
child. As soon as she arrived, quite unembarrassed, feeling fully at
her ease, as with a friend, she began to indulge in a ceaseless flow
of chatter. She had told him a score of times about her childhood at
Clermont, and she constantly reverted to it. On the evening that her
father, Captain Hallegrain, had suddenly died, she and her mother had
been to church. She perfectly remembered their return home and the
horrible night that had followed; the captain, very stout and muscular,
lying stretched on a mattress, with his lower jaw protruding to such a
degree that in her girlish memory she could not picture him otherwise.
She also had that same jaw, and when her mother had not known how to
master her, she had often cried: 'Ah, my girl, you'll eat your heart's
blood out like your father.' Poor mother! how she, Christine, had
worried her with her love of horseplay, with her mad turbulent fits. As
far back as she could remember, she pictured her mother ever seated at
the same window, quietly painting fans, a slim little woman with very
soft eyes, the only thing she had inherited of her. When people wanted
to please her mother they told her, 'she has got your eyes.' And then
she smiled, happy in the thought of having contributed at least that
touch of sweetness to her daughter's features. After the death of her
husband, she ha