erstand each other. If
you are willing, we will be a pair of friends, a pair of friends!" And
Benoist replied: "Indeed I will, certainly, indeed I will."

ALL OVER

Compte de Lormerin had just finished dressing. He cast a parting glance
at the large mirror which occupied an entire panel in his dressing-room
and smiled.

He was really a fine-looking man still, although quite gray. Tall,
slight, elegant, with no sign of a paunch, with a small mustache of
doubtful shade, which might be called fair, he had a walk, a nobility,
a "chic," in short, that indescribable something which establishes a
greater difference between two men than would millions of money. He
murmured:

"Lormerin is still alive!"

And he went into the drawing-room where his correspondence awaited him.

On his table, where everything had its place, the work table of the
gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside three
newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch he spread out
all these letters, like a gambler giving the choice of a card; and he
scanned the handwriting, a thing he did each morning before opening the
envelopes.

It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of inquiry and vague
anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious letters bring him? What did
they contain of pleasure, of happiness, or of grief? He surveyed them
with a rapid sweep of the eye, recognizing the writing, selecting them,
making two or three lots, according to what he expected from them.
Here, friends; there, persons to whom he was indifferent; further on,
strangers. The last kind always gave him a little uneasiness. What did
they want from him? What hand had traced those curious characters full
of thoughts, promises, or threats?

This day one letter in particular caught his eye. It was simple,
nevertheless, without seeming to reveal anything; but he looked at it
uneasily, with a sort of chill at his heart. He thought: "From whom can
it be? I certainly know this writing, and yet I can't identify it."

He raised it to a level with his face, holding it delicately between two
fingers, striving to read through the envelope, without making up his
mind to open it.

Then he smelled it, and snatched up from the table a little magnifying
glass which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He
suddenly felt unnerved. "Whom is it from? This hand is familiar to me,
very familiar. I must have often read its tracings, yes, ve