to-night or to-morrow night there
will be a hollow explosion, and armed men will storm in through the
breach.

If Charles had kept close watch over himself he would have heard strange
thoughts rustling within him. But he would not hear--he had only a dim
foreboding that some time there must come an explosion.--And one day it
came.

It was already after business hours; the clerks had all left the outer
office, and only the principals remained behind.

Charles was busily writing a letter which he wished to finish before he
left.

Alphonse had drawn on both his gloves and buttoned them. Then he had
brushed his hat until it shone, and now he was walking up and down and
peeping into Charles's letter every time he passed the desk.

They used to spend an hour every day before dinner in a cafe on the
great Boulevard, and Alphonse was getting impatient for his newspapers.

"Will you never have finished that letter?" he said, rather irritably.

Charles was silent a second or two, then he sprang up so that his chair
fell over: "Perhaps Alphonse imagined that he could do it better? Did
he not know which of them was really the man of business?" And now the
words streamed out with that incredible rapidity of which the French
language is capable when it is used in fiery passion.

But it was a turbid stream, carrying with it many ugly expressions,
upbraidings and recriminations; and through the whole there sounded
something like a suppressed sob.

As he strode up and down the room, with clenched hands and dishevelled
hair, Charles looked like a little wiry-haired terrier barking at an
elegant Italian greyhound. At last he seized his hat and rushed out.

Alphonse had stood looking at him with great wondering eyes. When he was
gone, and there was once more silence in the room, it seemed as though
the air was still quivering with the hot words. Alphonse recalled them
one by one, as he stood motionless beside the desk.

"Did he not know which was the abler of the two?" Yes, assuredly! he had
never denied that Charles was by far his superior.

"He must not think that he would succeed in winning everything to
himself with his smooth face." Alphonse was not conscious of ever having
deprived his friend of anything.

"I don't care for your _cocottes_," Charles had said.

Could he really have been interested in the little Spanish dancer? If
Alphonse had only had the faintest suspicion of such a thing he would
never have looked