entleman does not know the people with whom he is dealing!"

"Wretch!" said Vaudrey. "He did that?"

"And I thanked him," Adrienne replied calmly. "I did not know that you
had debts and that, in order to pay them, you had come so near accepting
the patronage of such a man. He told me so and he rendered me and you a
service."

"Me?"

Vaudrey snatched up the prospectus of the Algerian gas and angrily tore
it in pieces.

"We shall probably not see each other again," said Adrienne, in a firm
voice that contrasted strangely with her gentle grace; "but I shall
never forget that I bear your name and that being mine, I will ever
honor it."

She handed Sulpice a document.

"Here is a power of attorney to Monsieur Beauvais, my notary. All that
you need of my dowry to free yourself from liabilities is yours. I do
not wish to know why you have incurred debts, I am anxious only to know
that you have paid them, and my signature provides you with the means to
do so."

Dejected, his heart burning, and his sobs rising, Sulpice uttered a loud
cry as he rushed toward her:

"Adrienne!"

She withdrew her hand slowly while he was trying to seize it.

"You have nothing to thank me for," she said. "I am a partner, saving,
as I best can, the honor of the house. That association is better than
Molina's."

"Adieu," she added bitterly.

"Are you going--? Going away?" asked Sulpice, trying to give to his
entreaty something like an echo of the love of the former days.

"Whose fault is it?" replied the young woman, in a voice as chilly as
steel.

She was no longer the Adrienne of old, the little timid provincial with
blushing cheek and trembling gesture. Sorrow, the most terrible of
disillusions, had hardened and, as it were, petrified her. Vaudrey felt
that to ask forgiveness would be in vain. Time only could soften that
poor woman, obstinately unbending in her grief. He needed but to observe
her attitude and cutting tones to fully realize that.

"It is quite understood," she continued, treating this question of her
happiness as if she were cutting deep into her flesh and severing the
tenderest fibres of her being, but without trembling,--"it is quite
understood, is it not, that we shall make no scene or scandal? We are
separated neither judicially nor even in appearance. We live apart by
mutual consent, far from each other, without anything being known by
outsiders of this definitive rupture."

"Adrienne!" Sulpice repeated,