"It is late—but we can read just a little," she pleaded.
She was really getting now the food for her life during the next week. He made her copy Baudelaire's "Le Balcon". Then he read it for her. His voice was soft and caressing, but growing almost brutal. He had a way of lifting his lips and showing his teeth, passionately and bitterly, when he was much moved. This he did now. It made Miriam feel as if he were trampling on her. She dared not look at him, but sat with her head bowed. She could not understand why he got into such a tumult and fury. It made her wretched. She did not like Baudelaire, on the whole—nor Verlaine.
"Behold her singing in the field
Yon solitary highland lass."
That nourished her heart. So did "Fair Ines". And—
"It was a beauteous evening, calm and pure,
And b
