At this, however, Claude became angry, gesticulating and shaking his
fists.

'How much more of this comedy are we to have?' said he. 'As I give you
my bed, what have you to complain of? You need not pay any attention
to me. I shall sleep on that couch.'

He strode towards her with a threatening look, and thereupon, beside
herself with fear, thinking that he was going to strike her, she
tremblingly unfastened her hat. The water was dripping from her
skirts. He kept on growling. Nevertheless, a sudden scruple seemed to
come to him, for he ended by saying, condescendingly:

'Perhaps you don't like to sleep in my sheets. I'll change them.'

He at once began dragging them from the bed and flinging them on to
the couch at the other end of the studio. And afterwards he took a
clean pair from the wardrobe and began to make the bed with all the
deftness of a bachelor accustomed to that kind of thing. He carefully
tucked in the clothes on the side near the wall, shook the pillows,
and turned back a corner of the coverlet.

'There, that'll do; won't it?' said he.

And as she did not answer, but remained motionless, he pushed her
behind the screen. 'Good heavens! what a lot of fuss,' he thought. And
after spreading his own sheets on the couch, and hanging his clothes
on an easel, he quickly went to bed himself. When he was on the point
of blowing out the candle, however, he reflected that if he did so she