ble heart." And then she wept a little
as if she felt regretful.

He did not love her any longer, not the least bit. It was all over. Why?
How? He could not have said. What had happened had cured him better than
ten years of absence.

She asked, exhausted and trembling:

"What is it?"

He replied calmly:

"It is a very fine girl."

Then they were silent again. At the end of a few moments, the mother, in
a weak voice, said:

"Show her to me, Benoist."

He took up the little one and was showing it to her as if he were holding
the consecrated wafer, when the door opened, and Isidore Vallin appeared.

He did not understand at first, then all at once he guessed.

Benoist, in consternation, stammered out:

"I was passing, I was just passing by when f heard her crying out, and I
came--there is your child, Vallin!"

Then the husband, his eyes full of tears, stepped forward, took the
little mite of humanity that he held out to him, kissed it, unable to
speak from emotion for a few seconds; then placing the child on the bed,
he held out both hands to Benoist, saying:

"Your hand upon it, Benoist. From now on we understand each other. If you
are willing, we will be a pair of friends, a pair of friends!" And
Benoist replied: "Indeed I will, certainly, indeed I will."

ALL OVER

Compte de Lormerin had just finished dressing. He cast a parting glance
at the large mirror which occupied an entire panel in his dressing-room
and smiled.

He was really a fine-looking man still, although quite gray. Tall,
slight, elegant, with no sign of a paunch, with a small mustache of
doubtful shade, which might be called fair, he had a walk, a nobility, a
"chic," in short, that indescribable something which establishes a
greater difference between two men than would millions of money. He
murmured:

"Lormerin is still alive!"

And he went into the drawing-room where his correspondence awaited him.

On his table, where everything had its place, the work table of the
gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside three
newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch he spread out all
these letters, like a gambler giving the choice of a card; and he scanned
the handwriting, a thing he did each morning before opening the
envelopes.

It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of inquiry and vague
anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious letters bring him? What did
they contain of pleasure,