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'And what is happening to the rest of it?' She had reached the peak of her cunning. She didn't ask where he'd hidden the rest. He wouldn't have answered that one. She wanted him first of all to admit the rest.

Kien gazed at her in gratitude and affection. Her resistance had been the merest pretence. He had suspected it all along. He found it almost noble of her to speak of the million, the greater portion, simply as the rest. Evidently such sudden changes from rudeness to affection were, for people of her kind, very typical. He put himself in her place, realized how this declaration of devotion had for a long time been on the tip of her tongue, and how she had only hesitated to come out with it in order to heighten its effect. She was crude, but loyal. He began to understand her even better than before. A pity she was so old; it was too late to try to make a human being of her. He wouldn't allow her to have moods of the kind he had experienced. Education must begin in this way. All the thanks he had intended for her and all the love directed to his new books, vanished from his face. He put on an expression of severity and growled, as if he was offended: 'The rest will be spent on enlarging my library.'

Thérèse drew herself up, horrified and triumphant. Two admissions at one blow.
His 
library! And she had the inventory in her pocket! So there was more. He had said so himself. She did not know on which side to begin her counter-attack first. Her hand, which had strayed involuntarily to her pocket, decided.

"The books are mine!'

'What?'

'Three rooms belong to the wife, one belongs to the husband.'

'We are now speaking of eight rooms. Four additional ones — those in the next flat, I mean. I need room to house the Silzinger Library. That alone contains twenty-two thousand volumes.'

'And where's the money coming from?'

Again! He was tired of these hints. 'From your legacy. There is no more to be said on that score.'

'Not a penny.'

'What, not a penny?'

'The legacy belongs to me.'

'But I have the disposal of it.'

'A man's got to die first, he can dispose after.'

'What is the meaning of this?'

'I won't bargain!'

What was this, what was this; Must he strike sterner chords? The eight-roomed library, of which he did not lose sight for a moment, gave him a last small residue of patience.

'Our common interest is concerned in this matter.'

'I want the rest!'

'You cannot but appreciate ..."

'Where is the rest?'

'A wife must respect her husband.'

'And her husband steals the rest from his wife.'

'I ask a million for the acquisition of the Silzinger Library.'

'Ask, ask, ask. I want the rest. I want all of it.

'I am the master in this house.'

'I'm the mistress.'

'I present you with an ultimatum. I demand categorically a million for the acquisition

'I want the rest! I want the rest!'

'In three seconds. I shall count up to three

'Anyone can count. I shall count too!'

Both were almost crying with rage. With clenched teeth they both counted, screaming louder and louder: 'One! Two! Three!' The numbers burst out in small, double explosions, exactly together each time. Her numbers were big with the millions which the rest added to her fortune. His contained the new rooms. She would have gone on counting for ever, he counted up to three, and then four. Here he stopped. In rigid tension, stiffer than ever before, he walked up to her and bellowed —the caretaker's voice, his model, ringing in his ears: 'Your will at once.' The fingers of his right hand strove to form themselves into a fist and smote with all their force into the air. Thérèse paused in her counting; so — he had smashed her to pieces. She was indeed astonished. She had expected a life and death struggle. And now suddenly he gave in. Had she not been so taken up with the rest, she would hardly have known where she was. When people weren't robbing her any more, her anger evaporated. Her anger wasn't her everything. She sidled round her husband and approached the writing desk. He moved out of her way. Although he had smashed her to pieces, he was afraid she might return that blow, which had been meant for her, not the air. She had noticed no blow. She grabbed about among the papers, threw them shamelessly one on top of another and pulled one of them out.

'How does — a strange will — come to be — among my papers?' He attempted to bellow this rather longer sentence, and could not therefore hurl it at his wife in one. Three times he paused for breath. Before he had finished, she answered: 'Excuse me, what strange will?' She unfolded it hurriedly, spread it out fine and smooth on the table, put ink and pen ready and made room politely for the owner of the rest. As he approached, still not perfectly reassured, his first glance fell on the figure. It seemed familiar to him, but the important thing was: it was right. During their argument a slight anxiety as to the stupidity of this illiterate had disturbed him, lest she should have read it wrongly. Contented, he turned his eyes to the upper half of the document, sat down and began to examine the will more minutely.

Then he recognized his own will.

Thérèse said: 'The best thing is, write it out over again.' She forgot the danger to which she was exposing her noughts. Her faith in their authenticity was as firmly impressed on her heart, as his in her love for him. He said: 'But this is my ..." She smiled: 'Excuse me, what did I... ' He stood up, furious. She explained: 'One man, one word.' Before he made a clutch at her throat he had understood. She was urging him to write. She was going to pay for a clean sheet of paper herself. He slumped down into the chair, as if he were gross and heavy. She wanted to know at last just how she stood.

A few moments later they had understood each other for the first time.

CHAPTER XIII

BEATEN

The malicious pleasure with which he proved to her, from the evidence, how little he still possessed, tided Thérèse over the worst moment. She would have disintegrated into her chief components — skirt, ears and sweat — had not her hatred for him, which he was now intensifying with pedantic zeal, become the surviving core of her being. He showed her how much he had inherited. He fetched all the bills for books out of the different drawers among which his varying moods had distributed them. His memory for the trivialities of everyday, usually such a nuisance to him, now had its uses. On the back of the spoilt will, he noted down the sums. Broken as she was, Thérèse counted them up in her head and rounded them up to a total. She wanted to know what was really left over. It became evident that the library had cost far more than a million. He was not in the least consoled by this surprising result; its unexpectedly high value did not compensate him for the collapse of the four new rooms. Revenge for the way in which she had cheated him was his only thought. During the whole of this tedious operation, he spoke not one syllable too many, and — for him a heavier task — not one too few. A misunderstanding was impossible. When the annihilating figure was calculated at last, he added in loud staccato tones, like a schoolboy repeating a lesson: 'I have spent the rest on single books and on daily expenses.

At that Thérèse dissolved, flowing out of the door in a torrential stream, across the corridor into the kitchen. When it was time to go to bed she interrupted her crying, took off her starched skirt, laid it over a chair, sat down by the stove again and went on crying. The neighbouring bedroom, in which she had lived so happily for eight years as a housekeeper, invited her to sleep. But she did not think it respectable to end her mourning so soon, and did not move from her place.

On the following day early she began to put into practice the decisions she had taken during her period of mourning. She locked the three rooms of the flat which belonged to her. The beautiful dream was over. People are like that, but after all she had three rooms and the books in them. She wouldn't touch the furniture until Kien died. It must be spared.

Kien had passed the rest of Sunday at his writing desk. He worked as a pretence only, for his mission of enlightenment was completed. In fact he was fighting his greed for new books. It had awakened in him with so great a vehemence that his study, with all its shelves and all the volumes on them seemed to him worn out and stale. Time and again he had to force himself to reach for the Japanese manuscripts on his desk. When he got so far, he would touch them, and immediately, as if repelled, draw his hand back again. What was the meaning of them? They had been lying around his cell for fifteen years already. At midday and in the evening he forgot his hunger. Night found him still at his desk. On the half-written sheet before him he had drawn, quite contrary to his habit, characters which had no meaning whatever. Towards six in the morning he began to nod; at a time when he was usually getting .up, he was dreaming of a gigantic library built, on the site of the Observatory, at the crater of Vesuvius. Trembling with fear he walked up and down in it and waited for the eruption of the volcano, due in eight minutes. His fear and his pacing up and down lasted an eternity, but the eight minutes to the catastrophe remained constant. When he woke up the door into the neighbouring room was already closed. He saw this, but felt no more shut in than before. Doors did not matter, for everything was equally wearisome, the rooms, the doors, the books, the manuscripts, he himself, learning, his life.

Swaying a little with hunger he got up and tried the other doors which led into the hall. He found that he was locked in. He became conscious that his intention had been to fetch himself something to eat, and was ashamed in spite of his hunger. In the hierarchy of man's activities, eating was the lowest. Eating had become the object of a cult, but in fact it was but the preliminary to other, utterly contemptible motions. It occurred to him that he wanted to perform one of these too. He felt therefore that he was justified in rattling the door. His physical exertions and his empty stomach exhausted him to such an extent that he almost began to cry again, as he had done yesterday over the counting. But to-day he had not even strength for that; he could only call in a plaintive voice: 'I don't want anything to eat, I don't want anyt ling to eat.'

'Now you're talking,' said Thérèse who had been waiting outside for some little time and listening for his first movements. He needn't think he'd get anything to eat from her. A man who doesn't bring a penny into the house gets nothing to eat. That was what she had to say to him; she'd been afraid he might forget about the eating question. Now, as he renounced eating of his own free will, she opened the door and informed him of her views on the subject. Nor would she have her house turned into a pig-sty. The passage in front of her own rooms belonged to her. That was the law. That's why they put up: 'No right of way.' Opening and spreading out a piece of paper which she held crumpled up in her hand, she read out: No right of way. Temporary thoroughfare only.'

She had already been out and bought food for one person at the butcher's and the greengrocer's, where she was equally disliked. It came dearer that way, and she usually bought for several days together. To their questioning glances she answered aggressively: 'From to-day he won't get anything more to eat from me.' Proprietor, customers and staff in both shops wondered. Next she carefully copied the inscription from a neighbouring alley on to a piece of paper. All the time she was writing, her shopping bag with the beautiful food lay on the dirty pavement.

When she came back, he was still asleep. She bolted the door into the passage and stood on guard. Now she'd got to the point, she'd speak straight out to him. She withdrew her permission to use her passage. He was not to use her corridor to go to the kitchen or avatory any more. He had no business there. In future every time he made her passage dirty he'd have to clean it up. She was not a servant, she'd have the law on him. He could go in and out, but only if he kept to his own path. She'd show him where it was.

Without waiting for his answer she sidled all the way along the wall to the front door. Her skirt brushed against the wall, it did not trespass an inch into the part of the corridor which was hers. Then she glided into the kitchen, fetched a piece of chalk, a relic of her schooldays, and drew a thick line between her corridor and his. 'Excuse me, this will do for now,' she said, 'we'll have oil paint later.'

In hungry bewilderment, Kien had not fully understood what was happening. Her movements struck him as senseless. Am I still on Vesuvius? he asked himself. No, on Vesuvius there was that terror about the eight minutes, but not this woman. Perhaps it was not so bad on Vesuvius after all. Only the coming eruption would have caused discomfort. Meanwhile his own discomfort was growing. It drove him on to the forbidden corridor, just as if Thérèse had made no chalk line down it. In long strides, he reached his goal. Thérèse came after him. Her indignation was a match for his necessity. She would have overtaken him, had he not had a good start. He bolted himself in, in the customary way, an action which saved him from violence at her hands. She rattled at the closed door and spat out in repetitive jerks: 'I ask you, I'll have the law on you! I'll have the law on you!'

When she saw that it was all in vain, she withdrew to the kitchen. Over her stove, where all her best ideas came to her, she hit on what was justice. Very well, he should have the corridor. She could be considerate. He had to go to the lavatory. But what would she get in return? Nobody ever gave her anything for nothing. She'd had to earn every penny. She'd give him the corridor and he in return must give her part of his room. She must take care of her rooms, where should she sleep? She had locked up the three rooms full of new furniture. Now she would lock up her old bedroom too. No one should go in. I ask you, she'd have to sleep in his room. What else could she do? She'd sacrifice her beautiful corridor and he'd have to make room for her in his study. She'd bring the furniture out ofthat little room where the housekeeper used to sleep. In return he could go to the lavatory as often as he chose.

She went down at once into the street and fetched up a porter. She would have nothing to do with the caretaker, who had been bribed by that man.

As soon as her voice left him in peace, Kien had fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion. When he awoke he felt refreshed and courageous. He went into the kitchen and, without the least prick of conscience, helped himself to several slices of bread and butter. When, suspecting nothing, he returned to his own room he found that it had been cut down ty half. Right across the middle stood the Spanish screen. Behind it he came on Thérèse in the midst of her old bedroom furniture. She was just putting the finishing touches and admiring the beautiful effect. That shameless porter had gone off, thank the lord. He had demanded a whole fortune, but she'd only given him half, and thrown him out again, of which she was very proud. But the Spanish screen did not satisfy her, for it looked crazy. On one side it was empty and blank and on the other were nothing but a mass of crooked marks; she would have preferred a blood-red sunset. She pointed to the screen and said: 'I can't have that here. As far as I'm concerned it can go out.' Kien was silent. He dragged himself to his writing desk groaning softly and lowered himself into his chair.

After a minute or two he gathered himself to his feet. He wanted to sec whether the books in the neighbouring room were still alive. His anxiety arose more from a rooted sense of duty than from any real love. Since the preceding day he felt tenderness only for books which he did not possess. Before he could reach the door, Thérèse was already there. How had she noticed his movement in spite of the Spanish screen? How was it that her skirt carried her forward at a quicker pace than his legs; For the moment he laid a hand neither on her nor on the door. Before he had assembled even the courage which words cost him, she was already nagging: