“You don’t know how to dance, eh?  You come here, Edgar.”

She danced a while with him in the semi-darkness.  Then, rosy and smiling: 

“Bravo!” she laughed; “we’ll stop now.”

Servien stood by in gloomy silence, conscious of his own inefficiency.  His heart swelled with a sullen anger.  He was hurt, and longed for somebody or something to vent his hate upon.

The drive home was a silent one.  Jean nearly gave himself cramp in his determined efforts not to touch with his own the knees of Madame Ewans’ who dozed on the back seat of the conveyance.  She hardly awoke enough to bid him good-bye when he alighted at his father’s door.

As he entered, he was struck for the first time by a smell of paste that seemed past bearing.  The room where he had slept for years, happy in himself and loved by others, seemed a wretched hole.  He sat down on his bed and looked round gloomily and morosely at the holy-water stoup of gilt porcelain, the print commemorating his First Communion, the toilet basin on the chest of drawers, and stacked in the corners piles of pasteboard and ornamental paper for binding.

Everything about him seemed animated by a hostile, malevolent, unjust spirit.  In the next room he could hear his father moving.  He pictured him at his work-bench, with his serge apron, calm and content.  What a humiliation! and for the second time in a dozen hours he blushed for his parentage.

His slumbers were broken and uneasy; he dreamed he was turning, turning unendingly in complicated figures, and it was impossible always to avoid touching Madame Evans’ knee, though all the time he was horribly afraid of doing it.  Then there was a great field full of thousands and thousands of marble pigs stuck up on stone pedestals, among which he could see Monsieur Delbeque promenading slowly up and down.

VIII

Next morning he awoke feeling sour-tempered and low-spirited.

“Well, my boy,” his father asked him, blowing noisily at each spoonful of soup he absorbed, “well, did you enjoy yourself yesterday?”

He answered curtly and crossly.  Everything stirred his gorge.  His aunt’s print gown filled him with a sort of rage.

His father propounded a hundred minute inquiries; he would fain have pictured the whole expedition to himself as he consumed his bowl of soup.  He had seen Saint-Cloud in his soldiering days; but he had never been there since.  He had a bright idea; they would go to Versailles, the three of them; his sister would see to having a bit of veal cooked overnight, and they could take it with them.  They would have a look at the pictures, eat their snack on the great lawn, and have a fine time generally.

Jean, who was horrified at the whole project, opened his exercise-books and buried his head in his lessons, to avoid the necessity of hearing any more and answering questions.  He did not as a rule show such alacrity about setting to work.  His father remarked on the fact, commending him for his zeal.