The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few minutes, whilst he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with her nail. She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her speech.
“ Poor fellow!” she thought.
“ How have I displeased her?” he asked himself.
At last, however, Leon said that he should have, one of these days, to go to Rouen on some office business.
“ Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?”
“ No,” she replied.
“ Why?”
“ Because—”
And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey thread.
This work irritated Leon. It seemed to roughen
