elp me
in carrying out my idea of renting a room where you might live and work
with me. So I begged him to come up here and talk with you, and prevail
on you to keep that poor little fellow of yours. You see, I don't want
to take you unawares; I warn you in advance."

Norine started with emotion, and began to protest. "What is all this
again?" said she. "No, no, I don't want to be worried. I'm too unhappy
as it is."

But Mathieu immediately intervened, and made her understand that if she
reverted to the life she had been leading she would simply sink lower
and lower. She herself had no illusions on that point; she spoke
bitterly enough of her experiences. Her youth had flown, her good-looks
were departing, and the prospect seemed hopeless enough. But then what
could she do? When one had fallen into the mire one had to stay there.

"Ah! yes, ah! yes," said she; "I've had enough of that infernal life
which some folks think so amusing. But it's like a stone round my neck;
I can't get rid of it. I shall have to keep to it till I'm picked up in
some corner and carried off to die at a hospital."

She spoke these words with the fierce energy of one who all at once
clearly perceives the fate which she cannot escape. Then she glanced at
her infant, who was still nursing. "He had better go his way and I'll go
mine," she added. "Then we shan't inconvenience one another."

This time her voice softened, and an expression of infinite tenderness
passed over her desolate face. And Mathieu, in astonishment, divining
the new emotion that possessed her, though she did not express it, made
haste to rejoin: "To let him go his way would be the shortest way to
kill him, now that you have begun to give him the breast."

"Is it my fault?" she angrily exclaimed. "I didn't want to give it to
him; you know what my ideas were. And I flew into a passion and almost
fought Madame Bourdieu when she put him in my arms. But then how could
I hold out? He cried so dreadfully with hunger, poor little mite, and
seemed to suffer so much, that I was weak enough to let him nurse just
a little. I didn't intend to repeat it, but the next day he cried again,
and so I had to continue, worse luck for me! There was no pity shown
me; I've been made a hundred times more unhappy than I should have been,
for, of course, I shall soon have to get rid of him as I got rid of the
others."

Tears appeared in her eyes. It was the oft-recurring story of the
girl-mother w