e use. At times the odor of a sachet-bag,
the pattern of a bit of lace, were enough to bring tears to her eyes.
Suddenly she heard a heavy footstep in the salon, the door of which was
partly open; then there was a slight cough, as if to let her know that
some one was there. She supposed that it was Risler: for no one else had
the right to enter her apartments so unceremoniously. The idea of having
to endure the presence of that hypocritical face, that false smile, was
so distasteful to her that she rushed to close the door.

"I am not at home to any one."

The door resisted her efforts, and Sigismond's square head appeared in
the opening.

"It is I, Madame," he said in an undertone. "I have come to get the
money."

"What money?" demanded Claire, for she no longer remembered why she had
gone to Savigny.

"Hush! The funds to meet my note to-morrow. Monsieur Georges, when he
went out, told me that you would hand it to me very soon."

"Ah! yes--true. The hundred thousand francs."

"I haven't them, Monsieur Planus; I haven't anything."

"Then," said the cashier, in a strange voice, as if he were speaking to
himself, "then it means failure."

And he turned slowly away.

Failure! She sank on a chair, appalled, crushed. For the last few hours
the downfall of her happiness had caused her to forget the downfall of
the house; but she remembered now.

So her husband was ruined! In a little while, when he returned home, he
would learn of the disaster, and he would learn at the same time that
his wife and child had gone; that he was left alone in the midst of the
wreck.

Alone--that weak, easily influenced creature, who could only weep and
complain and shake his fist at life like a child! What would become of
the miserable man?

She pitied him, notwithstanding his great sin.

Then the thought came to her that she would perhaps seem to have fled at
the approach of bankruptcy, of poverty.

Georges might say to himself:

"Had I been rich, she would have forgiven me!"

Ought she to allow him to entertain that doubt?

To a generous, noble heart like Claire's nothing more than that was
necessary to change her plans. Instantly she was conscious that her
feeling of repugnance, of revolt, began to grow less bitter, and a
sudden ray of light seemed to make her duty clearer to her. When they
came to tell her that the child was dressed and the trunks ready, her
mind was made up anew.

"Never mind," she replied gently. "