it anonymously, so that he could not tell from whence it came, and they could not divide the credit of getting it between him and another.  He wanted it, and he had been good to her.  He had been kind when she was in trouble; he had not believed her when she had called herself dishonest; he had treated her as an equal, in spite of the affair at Marbridge, and he had asked her to marry him when he thought she was compromised by the holiday in the Dunes.  For a moment her mind strayed from the point at issue, to that offer of marriage.  She remembered the exact wording of the letter as if she had but just received it, and it pleased her afresh.  She did not regret that she had refused him; nothing else had been possible.  She did not want to marry him; albeit, when they had sat together under his coat, she had not shrunk from contact with him as she had shrunk from Joost when he had tried to take her hand—­that was certainly strange.  But she was quite sure she did not want to marry him; now she came to think about it, she could imagine that, were she a girl of his own class, with the looks, training and knowledge that belonged, she might have found him precisely the man she would have wanted to marry.

She went to a drawer and took out an old handkerchief.  She was not a girl of that sort—­deep down she felt inarticulately the old primitive consciousness of inferiority and superiority, at once jealous and contemptuous; marrying him and living always on his plane were alike impossible to her, but she could give him the explosive.  There was not one girl among all those others who could have got it and given it to him!

She tore a piece from the handkerchief, and fastened it over the stopper of the bottle; then she got out a hat trimmed with bows of wide ribbon, and sewed the bottle into the centre bow.  It presented rather a bulgy appearance, but by a little pulling of the other trimming it was hardly noticeable, and really nothing is too peculiar to be worn on the head.  After that she went to bed.

* * * * *

There was trouble in Herr Van de Greutz’s kitchen the next day; the young cook, who had behaved so admirably before, did what old Marthe called “showing the cloven hoof.”  She was impertinent, she was idle; she broke dishes, she wasted eggs, and she lighted a roaring fire in the big stove, in spite of the strict economy of fuel which was one of the first rules of the household.  Finally she announced that she must have a day’s holiday.  Marthe refused point blank, whereupon the cook said she should take it, and a dispute ensued; Marthe called her several names, and reminded her of the fact that she had no character, and that she had confessed to being obliged to leave the Van Heigens in haste.  Julia retorted that that fact was known to the housekeeper when she engaged her, and was the reason of the starvation wage offered.  Marthe then inquired what enormity it was that she had committed at the Van Heigens’,