Her hand went under the cape and lay over her heart to suppress its beating. She explained: "I climbed the stairs too fast." "Sit down! Rest yourself!" M. Raindal said calmly. "No, no! It is passed! I feel better!" She unhooked her cape and went to kiss her husband, then her daughter. Her cheeks carried the frost of the wind outside; they were cold as a window pane; she was still panting as she bent over each of them. "Where have you been, to return so late?" M. Raindal inquired, without lifting his eyes from his work. She protested. "So late!... But it is not 'so late'!... It is not more than 5.15.... I went to Guerbois, to order a pie for to-night.... Cyprien's coming to dinner, isn't he?" "Oh, yes ... Cyprien's coming." She did not dwell on the matter. She was choking with a new fear; she had almost sinned by telling an untruth. She poked the red lumps of coke and lowered the wick of the smoking lamp. Then, feeling the weight of the silence which was pregnant with irony and with suspicion perhaps, she left the room, her cheeks now suddenly aflame, her breast heavy with sighs. Thérèse and her father simultaneously raised their heads and exchanged a knowing smile. "Did you hear that?... her pie?..." He shrugged his shoulders quite discouraged. The young girl murmured with compassion: "Poor mother!... She is so kind!..." CHAPTER III At about a quarter to six, Uncle Cyprien went to his small dark kitchenette to polish his shoes before going out. He intended to go to the Klapproth Brasserie in the rue Vavin to join his old friend, Johann Schleifmann, and talk for an hour with him while drinking an _apéritif_. People who knew the younger M. Raindal's antisemitism were surprised at his intimacy with that Galician Jew. But when he was asked about it, Cyprien showed not the slightest embarrassment. Far from it! He eyed his inquirer from head to foot, shrugged his shoulders and then informed him--if he cared to know--that Schleifmann was the best man in the world. He had associated with him for ten years and never had had any cause to complain of him. These inquiries, moreover, seemed to him futile, because, he could vouch for it, Schleifmann, although a Jew, was as "much of an anti-semite as you or I." Cyprien voiced an exaggeration when he said this, or at least, he was misinterpreting his friend's feelings. Schleifmann could not be classified among those cautious Jews who deny their Jewry through fear of prejudice, or because they cringe before the majority, or through worldly or professional self-interest.