“Don’t touch me,” said Emilia.

Nothing exasperates certain natures so much as the effort of the visibly weak to intimidate them.

“I shall not touch you?” Mr. Pericles sneered.  “Zen, why are you here?”

“I came to my friend,” was Emilia’s reply.

“Your friend!  He is not ze friend of a couac-couac.  Once, if you please:  but now” (Mr. Pericles shrugged), “now you are like ze rest of women.  You are game.  Come to me.”

He caught once more at her hand, which she lifted; then at her elbow.

“Will you touch me when I tell you not to?”

There was the soft line of an involuntary frown over her white face, and as he held her arm from the doubled elbow, with her clenched hand aloft, she appeared ready to strike a tragic blow.

Anger and every other sentiment vanished from Mr. Pericles in the rapturous contemplation of her admirable artistic pose.

“Mon Dieu! and wiz a voice!” he exclaimed, dashing his fist in a delirium of forgetfulness against the one plastered lock of hair on his shining head.  “Little fool! little dam fool!—­zat might have been”—­(Mr. Pericles figured in air with his fingers to signify the exaltation she was to have attained)—­“Mon Dieu! and look at you!  Did I not warn you? non a vero?  Did I not say ’Ruin, ruin, if you go so?  For a man!—­a voice!  You will not come to me?  Zen, hear! you shall go to old Belloni.  I do not want you, my pretty dear.  Woman is a trouble, a drug.  You shall go to old Belloni; and, crack! if ze voice will come back to a whip,—­bravo, old Belloni!”

Mr. Pericles turned to reach down his hat from a peg.  At the same instant Emilia quitted the room.

Dusk was deepening the yellow atmosphere, and the crowd was now steadily flowing in one direction.  The bereaved creature went with the stream, glad to be surrounded and unseen, till it struck her, at last, that she was moving homeward.  She stopped with a pang of grief, turned, and met all those people to whom the fireside was a beacon.  For some time she bore against the pressure, but her loneliness overwhelmed her.  None seemed to go her way.  For a refuge, she turned into one of the city side streets, where she was quite alone.  Unhappily, the street was of no length, and she soon came to the end of it.  There was the choice of retracing her steps, or entering a strange street; and while she hesitated a troop of sheep went by, that made a piteous noise.  She followed them, thinking curiously of the something broken that appeared to be in their throats.  By-and-by, the thought flashed in her that they were going to be slaughtered.  She held her step, looking at them, but without any tender movement of the heart.  They came to a butcher’s yard, and went in.