Part 18 (2/2)
”Rotten!--they were but overripe.”
”It is the same thing.”
”You dare to answer me?--animal! I say they had only tasted a little too much of the sun. It only made them the sweeter.”
”They were rotten.”
”They were not. You dare to speak! If they had been rotten they lay under the others; he could not have seen----”
”I saw.”
”You saw! Who are you?--a beggar--a beast--a foul offspring of sin. You dared to show them to him, I will warrant?”
”I showed him that they were not good.”
”And gave him back the two sous?”
”I took seven sous for what were good. I took nothing for the rotten ones.”
”Wretch! you dare to tell me that!”
A smile careless and sarcastic curled her mouth; her eyes looked at him with all their boldest fiercest l.u.s.ter.
”I never steal--not even from you, good Flamma.”
”You have stolen now!” he shrieked, his thin and feeble voice rising in fury at his lost coins and his discovered treachery. ”It is a lie that the figs were rotten; it is a lie that you took but seven sous. You stole the two sous to buy you bread and honey in the streets, or to get a drink at the wineshops. I know you; I know you; it is a devil's device to please your gluttonous appet.i.te. The figs rotten!--not so rotten as is your soul would they be, though they were black as night and though they stunk as river mud! Go back to Denis Florian and bring me the two sous, or I will thrash you as a thief.”
She laughed a hard, scornful, reckless laughter.
”You can thrash me; you cannot make me a thief.”
”You will not go back to Florian?”
”I will not ask him to pay for what was bad.”
”You will not confess that you stole the money?”
”I should lie if I did.”
”Then strip.”
She set her teeth in silence; and without a moment's hesitation unloosened the woolen sash knotted round her waist, and pushed down the coa.r.s.e linen s.h.i.+rt from about her throat.
The white folds fell from off the perfect curves of her brown arms, and left bare her s.h.i.+ning shoulders beautiful as any sculptured Psyche's.
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