eaming. He made for
himself a sort of review of things that had happened since last New
Year's Day, things that were now all over and dead; and, in proportion
as the faces of his friends rose up before his eyes, he wrote them a
few lines, a cordial "Good morning" on the 1st of January.

So he sat down, opened a drawer, took out of it a woman's photograph,
gazed at it a few moments, and kissed it. Then, having laid it beside
a sheet of note-paper, he began:

"My dear Irene.--You must have by this time the little souvenir which
I sent you. I have shut myself up this evening in order to tell you."

The pen here ceased to move. Jacques rose up and began walking up and
down the room.

For the last six months he had a mistress, not a mistress like the
others, a woman with whom one engages in a passing intrigue, of the
theatrical world or the "demi-monde, but a woman whom he loved and
won. He was no longer a young man, although he was still comparatively
young for a man, and he looked on life seriously in a positive and
practical spirit.

Accordingly, he drew up the balance sheet of his passion, as he drew
up every year the balance sheet of friendships that were ended or
freshly contracted, of circumstances and persons that had entered into
his life.

His first ardor of love having grown calmer, he asked himself with the
precision of a merchant making a calculation, what was the state of
his heart with regard to her, and he tried to form an idea of what it
would be in the future.

He found there a great and deep affection, made up of tenderness,
gratitude, and the thousand subtle ties which give birth to long and
powerful attachments.

A ring of the bell made him start. He hesitated. Would he open? But he
said to himself that it was his duty to open on this New Year's night,
to open to the Unknown who knocks while passing, no matter whom it may
be.

So he took a wax candle, passed through the antechamber, removed the
bolts, turned the key, drew the door back, and saw his mistress
standing pale as a corpse, leaning against the wall.

He stammered.

"What is the matter with you?"

She replied,

"Are you alone?"

"Yes."

"Without servants?"

"Yes."

"You are not going out?"

"No."

She entered with the air of a woman who knew the house. As soon as she
was in the drawing-room, she sank into the sofa, and, covering her
face with her hands, began to weep dreadfully.

He knelt down at her feet, seized h