"Out with her!" cried her husband in a fierce whisper. "Perine, Perine, and I have warned you so often to touch nothing without leave! Now you have spoilt the soup, and we can have no dinner." There was this inconvenience in the quick remorse which seized the girl when Marie reproved her, however gently, that she broke at once into sobs, which were as clumsy and unmanageable as her hands and feet. Jean disliked them intensely, and he now made frantic signs to his wife that she was to be sent away. "But she is as hungry as we are," pleaded Marie, "and see, M. Plon has given me a cabbage, I can manage something." He was, however, inexorable; and his wife, always afraid of his committing some imprudence, though on the whole Jean might be trusted to take care of himself, said sorrowfully: "Perine, my poor child, you must go; there is no dinner for you today. Don't cry, don't cry; you meant no harm--you did not know, and Heaven is witness how sorely we sometimes suffer for that!" Between her sobs the girl jerked out piteously: "Perine come back?" Marie looked imploringly at her husband, but he shook his head. "Not tonight, not to-night, my child. As you go out beg for a bit of bread from M. Plon, he is in a splendid temper, and will not refuse it. There make haste, go!" She took her by the shoulders and pushed her towards the door, but when she left her outside, kissed her. PART II. Perine had no sooner gone than Jean came out and flung himself angrily on a chair. "I shall stand this no longer. I give you notice of my determination, Marie. You have her here, I believe, solely to torment me. Figure to yourself having to stand by helpless, and see the creature put an end to both one's dinner and one's pipe! She is not to come here any more, those are my orders. Do you hear?" "Yes, I hear," said Marie quietly, "but I beg of you to change your mind. We are badly off, I allow, yet somehow or other we can always rub along, and this poor child is in worse plight than we are." "Worse? Nonsense. No one can be worse off than I am. Denounced, executed, for I assure you I felt that bullet go through my brain, saved just by the hair of my head--" "Such a mercy!" breathed the wife. "A mercy, yes--but you who can go and come and amuse yourself, never think what this life must be to me, cooped up like a rat in his hole. There are times when I believe I should do better to give myself up." "For the sake of Heaven, Jean--!" "At any rate," said Jean, descending from his heights, "I will not have that _imbecile_ here. You understand?" Marie looked at him indulgently. "Yes, my friend, I understand." "I'll lay a wager you never got that journal from old Plon-Plon?" "He had not finished with it." "Of course not. Then I shall go to sleep, for there is nothing else for me to do."