In point of fact there had not been any quarrel between the two sisters, nor any domestic disagreement during the first ten months; but then matters gradually became unpleasant. It started with displays of bad temper. There were fits of sulking, and at last loud words were exchanged; and, beneath it all, the fermenting question of "mine" and "thine" was at its ravaging work, gradually destroying affection. Certainly Lise and Françoise no longer loved one another as tenderly as of old. No one now met them with their arms round each other's waists, walking out in the gloaming wrapped in the same shawl. A separation had come between them; a coolness was growing up. Since there had been a man in the house, it seemed to Françoise that her sister had been taken from her. She who once had shared everything with Lise, had no share in this man; and he had thus become a something foreign, an obstacle shutting her out from the heart in which she had lived alone. All this, moreover, had a material side. She used to leave without kissing her elder sister when Buteau did so, feeling as shocked as if some one had drunk out of her glass. In matters of ownership, she kept to her childish notions with passionate earnestness. "This is mine, that is yours;" and, as her sister belonged thenceforward to another, she let her go. But she wanted what was her own, one-half of the land and of the house. This wrath of hers was also caused by another matter which she herself could not have explained. There had, so far, been nothing to disturb her in the house, where love scenes had been unknown, a chill having fallen upon the place when old Mouche became a widower. But now it was inhabited by a brutal man with the instincts of his sex, who had always been in the habit of running after the girls in the fields, and whose unrestrained dalliance with her sister, which she was obliged to be cognisant of, made her feel alike disgusted and exasperated. During the daytime she preferred to go out, and let them indulge in their dirty tricks unrestrained. In the evening, if they began laughing on getting up from table, she called to them to wait till she had finished washing up the dishes. And then she rushed madly to her room, slamming the doors and muttering insults: "The beasts! The beasts!" between her clenched teeth. In spite of all, she still fancied that she could hear what was going on below her, downstairs. With her head buried in the pillow, and with the sheets drawn up to her eyes, she grew hot and feverish; her hearing and her sight were haunted by hallucinations, and her revolting puberty made her suffer.