r dark.

It took them to their dwelling in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly they
mounted the stairs to their flat. All was ended for her. As to him, he
reflected that he must be at the ministry at ten o'clock that morning.

She removed her wraps before the glass so as to see herself once more in
all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry. She no longer had the
necklace around her neck!

"What is the matter with you?" demanded her husband, already half
undressed.

She turned distractedly toward him.

"I have--I have--I've lost Madame Forestier's necklace," she
cried.

He stood up, bewildered.

"What!--how? Impossible!"

They looked among the folds of her skirt, of her cloak, in her pockets,
everywhere, but did not find it.

"You're sure you had it on when you left the ball?" he asked.

"Yes, I felt it in the vestibule of the minister's house."

"But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it fall. It
must be in the cab."

"Yes, probably. Did you take his number?"

"No. And you--didn't you notice it?"

"No."

They looked, thunderstruck, at each other. At last Loisel put on his
clothes.

"I shall go back on foot," said he, "over the whole route, to see whether
I can find it."

He went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball dress, without
strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, without any fire, without a thought.

Her husband returned about seven o'clock. He had found nothing.

He went to police headquarters, to the newspaper offices to offer a
reward; he went to the cab companies--everywhere, in fact, whither
he was urged by the least spark of hope.

She waited all day, in the same condition of mad fear before this
terrible calamity.

Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale face. He had discovered
nothing.

"You must write to your friend," said he, "that you have broken the clasp
of her necklace and that you are having it mended. That will give us time
to turn round."

She wrote at his dictation.

At the end of a week they had lost all hope. Loisel, who had aged five
years, declared:

"We must consider how to replace that ornament."

The next day they took the box that had contained it and went to the
jeweler whose name was found within. He consulted his books.

"It was not I, madame, who sold that necklace; I must simply have
furnished the case."

Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, searching for a necklace like the
other, trying to recall it, both sick wit