sture, and stood for a
few moments, without moving, as though seeking a word of farewell.
Then she said:

"Edmond's not here! I thought he was working with you?"

"He was feeling tired."

"Is he asleep?"

"Yes."

"I wanted to kiss him good-night."

"No, you would only wake him. And here's your car; so go, dear. Amuse
yourself."

"Oh, amuse myself!" she said. "There's not much amusement about the opera
and an evening party."

"Still, it's better than keeping one's room."

There was some little constraint. It was obviously one of those
ill-assorted households in which the husband, suffering in health and not
caring for the pleasures of society, stays at home, while the wife seeks
the enjoyments to which her age and habits entitle her.

As he said nothing more, she bent over and kissed him on the forehead.
Then, once more bowing to the two visitors, she went out. A moment later
they heard the sound of the motor driving away.

Hippolyte Fauville at once rose and rang the bell. Then he said:

"No one here has any idea of the danger hanging over me. I have confided
in nobody, not even in Silvestre, my own man, though he has been in my
service for years and is honesty itself."

The manservant entered.

"I am going to bed, Silvestre," said M. Fauville. "Get everything ready."

Silvestre opened the upper part of the great sofa, which made a
comfortable bed, and laid the sheets and blankets. Next, at his master's
orders, he brought a jug of water, a glass, a plate of biscuits, and a
dish of fruit.

M. Fauville ate a couple of biscuits and then cut a dessert-apple. It was
not ripe. He took two others, felt them, and, not thinking them good, put
them back as well. Then he peeled a pear and ate it.

"You can leave the fruit dish," he said to his man. "I shall be glad of
it, if I am hungry during the night.... Oh, I was forgetting! These two
gentlemen are staying. Don't mention it to anybody. And, in the morning,
don't come until I ring."

The man placed the fruit dish on the table before retiring. Perenna, who
was noticing everything, and who was afterward to remember every smallest
detail of that evening, which his memory recorded with a sort of
mechanical faithfulness, counted three pears and four apples in the dish.

Meanwhile, Fauville went up the winding staircase, and, going along the
gallery, reached the room where his son lay in bed.

"He's fast asleep," he said to Perenna, who had joined him.

Th