GERMINAL
eh? No, that disgusts me; it doesn't give me any pleasure. What's the use of doing it?"
They were silent, and walked some hundred paces without exchanging a word.
"But, anyhow, do you know where to go to?" he said again. "I can't leave you out in a night like this."
She replied, simply:
"I'm going back. Chaval is my man. I have nowhere else to sleep but with him."
"But he will beat you to death."
There was silence again. She had shrugged her shoulders in resignation. He would beat her, and when he was tired of beating her he would stop. Was not that better than to roam the streets, like a vagabond? Then she was used to blows; she said, to console herself, that eight out of ten girls were no better off than she was. If her lover married her some day it would, all the same, be very nice of him.
Étienne and Catherine were moving mechanically towards Montsou, and as they came nearer their silences grew longer. It was as though they had never been together. He could find no argument to convince her, in spite of the deep vexation which he felt at seeing her go back to Chaval. His heart was breaking, he had nothing better to offer than an existence of wretchedness and flight, a night with no to-morrow should a soldier's bullet go through his head. Perhaps, after all, it was wiser to suffer what he was suffering rather than risk a fresh suffering. So he led her back to her lover's, with sunken head, and made no protest when she stopped him on the main road, at the corner of the Yards, twenty mètres from the Estaminet Piquette, saying:
"Don't come any further. If he sees you it will only make things worse."
Eleven o'clock struck at the church. The estaminet was closed, but gleams came through the cracks.
"Good-bye," she murmured.
She had given him her hand; he kept it, and she had to draw it away painfully, with a slow effort, to leave him. Without turning her head, she went in through the little latched door. But he did not turn away, standing at the same place with his eyes on the house, anxious as to what was passing within. He listened, trembling lest he should hear the cries of a beaten woman.
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