“No,” she said, trying to hide the drawers with her hands. “Don’t look! It is a dreadful muddle. …”
She went on looking. But Christophe embarrassed her. She was cross, and as she pushed the drawer back she said:
“I can’t find any. Go to Lisi, in the next street. She is sure to have them. She has everything that people want.”
He laughed at her way of doing business.
“Do you send all your customers away like that?”
“Well. You are not the first,” said Sabine warmly.
And yet she was a little ashamed:
“It is too much trouble to tidy up,” she said. “I put off doing it from day to day. … But I shall certainly do it tomorrow.”
“Shall I help you?” asked Christophe.
She refused. She would gladly have accepted: but she dared not, for fear of gossip. And besides it humiliated her.
They went on talking.
“And your buttons?” she said to Christophe a moment later. “Aren’t you going to Lisi?”
“Never,” said Christophe. “I shall wait until you have tidied up.”
“Oh!” said Sabine, who had already forgotten what she had just said, “don’t wait all that time!”
Her frankness delighted them both.
Christophe went to the drawer that she had shut.
“Let me look.”
She ran to prevent his doing so.
“No, now please. I am sure I haven’t any.”
“I bet you have.”
At once he found the button he wanted, and was triumphant. He wanted others. He wanted to go on rummaging; but she snatched the box from his hands, and, hurt in her vanity, she began to look herself.
The light was fading. She went to the window. Christophe sat a little away from her: the little girl clambered on to his knees. He pretended to listen to her chatter and answered her absently. He was looking at Sabine and she knew that he was looking at her. She bent over the box. He could see her neck and a little of her cheek.—And as he looked he saw that she was blushing. And he blushed too.
The child went on talking. No one answered her. Sabine did not move. Christophe could not see what she was doing, he was sure she was doing nothing: she was not even looking at the box in her hands. The silence went on and on. The little girl grew uneasy and slipped down from Christophe’s knees.
“Why don’t you say anything?”
Sabine turned sharply and took her in her arms. The box was spilled on the floor: the little girl shouted with glee and ran on hands and knees after the buttons rolling under the furniture. Sabine went to the window again and laid her cheek against the pane. She seemed to be absorbed in what she saw outside.
“Good night!” said Christophe, ill at ease. She did not turn her head, and said in a low voice:
“Good night.”
On Sundays the house was empty during the afternoon. The whole family went to church for Vespers. Sabine did not go. Christophe jokingly reproached her with it once when he saw her sitting at her door in the little garden, while the lovely bells were bawling themselves hoarse summoning her. She replied in the same tone that only Mass was compulsory: not Vespers: it was then no use, and perhaps a little indiscreet to be too zealous: and she liked to think that God would be rather pleased than angry with her.
“You have made God in your own image,” said Christophe.
“I should be so bored if I were in His place,” replied she with conviction.
“You would not bother much about the world if you were in His place.”
“All that I should ask of it would be that it should not bother itself about me.”
“Perhaps it would be none the worse for that,” said Christophe.
“Tssh!” cried Sabine, “we are being irreligious.”
“I don’t see anything irreligious in saying that God is like you. I am sure He is flattered.”
“Will you be silent!” said Sabine, half laughing, half angry. She was beginning to be afraid that God would be scandalized. She quickly turned the conversation.
“Besides,” she said, “it is the only time in the week when one can enjoy the garden in peace.”
“Yes,” said Christophe. “They are gone.” They looked at each other.
“How silent it is,” muttered Sabine. “We are not used to it. One hardly knows where one is. …”
“Oh!” cried Christophe suddenly and angrily.
“There are days when I would like to strangle her!” There was no need to ask of whom he was speaking.
“And the others?” asked Sabine gaily.
“True,” said Christophe, a little abashed. “There is Rosa.”
“Poor child!” said Sabine.
They were silent.
“If only it were always as it is now!” sighed Christophe.
She raised her laughing eyes to his, and then dropped them. He saw that she was working.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
(The fence of ivy that separated the two gardens was between them.)
“Look!” she said, lifting a basin that she was holding in her lap. “I am shelling peas.”
She sighed.
“But that is not unpleasant,” he said, laughing.
“Oh!” she replied, “it is disgusting, always having to think of dinner.”
“I bet that if it were possible,” he said, “you would go without your dinner rather than have the trouble of cooking it.”
“That’s true,” cried she.
“Wait! I’ll come and help you.”
He climbed over the fence and came to her.
She was sitting in a chair in the door. He sat on a step at her feet. He dipped into her lap for handfuls of green pods; and he poured the little round peas into the basin that Sabine held between her knees. He looked down. He saw Sabine’s black stockings clinging to her ankles and feet—one of her feet was half out of its shoe. He dared not raise his eyes to look at her.
The air was heavy. The sky was dull and clouds hung low:
