"Ah! indeed! I do not understand you! And yet you were an honest man. Yes, you would never have taken a sou from anyone. And what you did might have been forgiven, for you were crazy, and made me the same. But this money! Ah! this abominable money! which should not exist for you, and which you are stealing sou by sou for your pleasure. What has happened? How could you have fallen so low?" He listened to her, and in a moment of lucidity he also felt astonished that he should have arrived at thieving. The phases of the slow demoralisation were becoming effaced, he was unable to re-join what the murder had severed around him, he failed to understand how another existence, how almost a new being had commenced, with his home destroyed, his wife standing aside, and hostile. But the unavoidable subject at once came uppermost in his mind. He gave a gesture, as if to free himself from troublesome reflections, and growled: "When there is no pleasure at home, one seeks diversion outside. As you no longer love me----" "Oh! no, I have no more love for you," she interrupted. He looked at her, gave a blow with his fist on the table, and the blood rushed to his face. "Then leave me alone!" he exclaimed. "Do I interfere with your amusements? Do I sit in judgment on you? There are many things an upright man would do in my place, and which I do not do! To begin with, I ought to kick you out at the door. After that I should perhaps not steal." She had become quite pale, for she also had often thought that when a man, and particularly a jealous man, is ravaged by some internal evil to the point of allowing his wife a sweetheart, there exists an indication of moral gangrene invading his being, destroying the other scruples, and entirely disorganising his conscience. But she struggled inwardly, refusing to hold herself responsible, and in an unsteady voice she exclaimed: "I forbid you to touch the money!" He had finished eating, and, quietly folding up his napkin, he rose, saying in a bantering tone: "If you want to share the cash, let us do so." He was already bending down as if to take up the piece of parquetry, and she had to rush forward and place her foot on it. "No, no!" she pleaded. "You know I would prefer death. Do not open it. No, no! not before me!" That same night Séverine had an appointment with Jacques behind the goods station. When she returned home after twelve o'clock, the scene with her husband in the evening recurred to her, and she double-locked herself in her bedroom. Roubaud was on night duty, and she had no anxiety lest he should return and come to bed, a circumstance that very rarely happened, even when he had his nights to himself. But with bedclothes to her chin, and the lamp turned down, she failed to get to sleep. Why had she refused to share?