en-room. The two of them
would speak of improvements on the farm or about people whom they knew.
But there was always a word or a sentence in their conversation which
came straight to me from Henri Deslois. I often used to catch M.
Alphonse looking at me, and I could not always keep from blushing.

One afternoon as Henri Deslois came in to the room smiling, M. Alphonse
said, "You know I have sold the house on the hill." The two men looked
at one another. They both grew so pale that I was afraid they were
going to die where they stood. Then M. Alphonse got out of his chair
and stood leaning against the chimney-piece, while Henri Deslois went
to the door and tried to close it. Madame Alphonse put her lace down
on her knee and said, as though she were repeating a lesson, "The house
was of no particular good, and I am very pleased that it has been
sold." Henri Deslois came and stood by the table, so close to me that
he could have touched me. He said in a voice that was not quite firm,
"I am sorry you have sold it without having mentioned it to me, for I
intended to buy it." M. Alphonse wriggled like an earthworm. He made
a great effort to laugh out loud, and as he laughed he said, "You would
have bought it? What would you have done with it?" Henri Deslois put
his hand on the back of my chair and answered, "I would have lived in
it as Jean le Rouge did." M. Alphonse walked up and down in front of
the chimney. His face had changed into a yellow earthy colour. His
hands were in his trouser pockets, and he picked up his feet so quickly
that it looked as though he were pulling at them with a cord which he
held in each hand. Then he came and leaned on the table opposite us,
and looking at us one after the other with his glittering eyes, he bent
forward and said, "Well, I have sold it now, so it is all over."
During the silence which followed we could hear the white mare pawing
the ground with her shoe as though she were calling her master. Henri
Deslois went towards the door. Then he came back to me and picked up
my work which had fallen from my hands without my having noticed it.
He kissed his sister, and before he went, he said, looking at me, "I
shall see you to-morrow."

Next morning Madame Deslois came into the linen-room. She came
straight to me, and was very rude. But M. Alphonse told her to be
quiet, and, turning to me, he said, "Madame Alphonse has asked me to
tell you that she would like to ke