the New Year's gift that I was to receive--it was always very handsome--to the fixing of my allowance, my "week," as we called it, which was paid on each Thursday, at the highest figure permitted by the rules of the Lycée. Never had this man, who was so imperious by nature, raised his voice in speaking to me. Never once since his marriage had he varied from the most perfect politeness towards me; a woman who was in love with him would naturally see in this a proof of exquisite tact and devoted affection. Put my grievances against my stepfather into words? No, I could not do it. And so I was silent, and how was my mother to explain my sullenness, the absence of any demonstrativeness on my part towards my stepfather otherwise than by my selfishness and want of feeling? She did believe me, in fact, to be a selfish and unfeeling boy, and I, owing to my unhealthy mood of mind, felt that when I was in her presence I really became what she believed me. I shrank into myself like a surly animal. But why did she not spare me those trials which completed our alienation from each other? Why, when we met on those wretched Sundays, did she not contrive that I should have the five minutes alone with her that would have enabled me, not to talk to her--I did not ask so much--but to embrace her, as I loved her, with all my heart? I came into the room which she had transformed into a private sitting-room--in every corner of it I had played at my free pleasure when I, the spoiled child whose lightest wish was a command, was the master--and there was M. Termonde in his morning costume, smoking cigarettes and reading newspapers. It needed nothing but the rustic of the sheet in his hand, the tone of his voice as he bade me good-day, the touch of his fingers--he merely gave me their tips--and I recoiled upon myself. So strong was my antipathy that I never remember to have eaten with a good appetite at the same table with him. My wretchedness was at its height during those Sunday breakfasts and dinners. Ah, I hated everything about him; his blue eyes, almost too far apart, which were sometimes fixed, and at others rolled slightly in their orbits, his high prominent forehead, and prematurely grey hair, the refinement of his features, and the elegance of his manners, such a contrast with my natural dulness and lack of ease--yes, I hated all these, and even to the finely-shaped foot which was set off by his perfect boots. I think that even now, at this present hour, I should recognise a coat he had worn, among a thousand, so living a thing has a garment of his seemed to me, under the influence of that aversion. Only too well did I, with my filial instinct, realise that he, with his slender graceful figure, his feline movements, his flattering voice, his native and acquired aristocratic ways, was the true husband of the lovely, highly-adorned, almost ideal creature whom I, her son, resembled as little as my poor father had resembled her. Ah, how bitter was that knowledge!