As she sat by him empty-handed--for it was Sunday night,
and as a Christian she never worked with a needle upon the Sunday--she
told herself that she could not do it. Could there be any harm done
were she to ask him now, openly, what papers he kept in that desk? But
she desired to obey her lover where obedience was possible, and he had
expressly forbidden her to ask any such question. She sat, therefore,
and said no word that could tend to ease her suffering; and then, when
the time came, she went suffering to her bed.
On the next day there seemed to come to her no opportunity for doing
that which she had to do. Souchey was in and out of the house all the
morning, explaining to her that they had almost come to the end of the
flour and of the potatoes which he had bought, that he himself had
swallowed on the previous evening the last tip of the great sausage--
for, as he had alleged, it was no use a fellow dying of starvation
outright--and that there was hardly enough of chocolate left to make
three cups. Nina had brought out her necklace and had asked Souchey to
take it to the shop and do the best with it he could; but Souchey had
declined the commission, alleging that he would be accused of having
stolen it; and Nina had then prepared to go herself, but her father had
called her, and he had come out into the sitting-room and had remained
there during the afternoon, so that both the sale of the trinket and
the search in the desk had been postponed.
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