When I came in she was in the act of peeling invisible potatoes; there are potatoes scattered over the floor, everywhere. My feet kick them and send them rolling heavily among odds and ends of utensils and a soft deposit of garments that are lying about. As soon as I am there my aunt overflows with noisy tears.
Not daring to speak again, I sit down in my usual corner.
Over the bed I can make out a pointed shape, like a mounted picture, silhouetted against the curtains, which slightly blacken the window. It is as though the quilt were lifted from underneath by a stick, for my Aunt Josephine is leanness itself.
Gradually she raises her voice and begins to lament. "You've no feelings, no--you're heartless,--that dreadful word you said to me,--you said, 'You and your jawing!' Ah! people don't know what I have to put up with--ill-natured--cart-horse!"
In silence I hear the tear-streaming words that fall and founder in the dark room from that obscure blot on the pillow which is her face.
I stand up. I sit down again. I risk saying, "Come now, come; that's all done with."
She cries: "Done with? Ah! it will never be done with!"
With the sheet that night is begriming she muzzles herself, and hides her face. She shakes her head to left and to right, violently, so as to wipe her eyes and signify dissent at the same time.
"Never! A word like that you said to me breaks the heart forever. But I must get up and get you something to eat. You must eat. I brought you up when you were a little one,"--her voice capsizes--"I've given up all for you, and you treat me as if I were an adventuress."
I hear the sound of her skinny feet as she plants them successively on the floor, like two boxes. She is seeking her things, scattered over the bed or slipped to the floor; she is swallowing sobs. Now she is upright, shapeless in the shadow, but from time to time I see her remarkable leanness outlined. She slips on a camisole and a jacket,--a spectral vision of garments which unfold themselves about her handle-like arms, and above the hollow framework of her shoulders.
She talks to herself while she dresses, and gradually all my life-history, all my past comes forth from what the poor woman says,--my only near relative on earth; as it were my mother and my servant.