women who have never done you any harm. Be generous! Be just!
Spare us!"

Cayrol remained silent; his face did not relax. After a moment he said:

"You see how low I have fallen, by not yielding at once to your
supplications! Friendship, gratitude, generosity, all the good feelings I
had, have been consumed by this execrable love. There is nothing left but
love for her. For her, I forget everything. I degrade and debase myself.
And what is worse than all, is that I know all this and yet I cannot help
myself."

"Miserable man!" murmured the mistress.

"Oh! most miserable," sobbed Cayrol, falling into an armchair.

Madame Desvarennes approached him, and quietly placed her hand on his
shoulder.

"Cayrol, you are weeping? Then, forgive."

The banker arose and, with lowering brow, said:

"No! my resolution is irrevocable. I wish to place a world between Jeanne
and Serge. If he has not gone away by tonight my complaint will be lodged
in the courts of justice."

Madame Desvarennes no longer persisted. She saw that the husband's heart
was permanently closed.

"It is well. I thank you for having warned me. You might have taken
action without doing so. Good-by, Cayrol. I leave your conscience to
judge between you and me."

The banker bowed, and murmured:

"Good-by!"

And with a heavy step, almost tottering, he went out.

The sun had risen, and lit up the trees in the garden. Nature seemed to
be making holiday. The flowers perfumed the air, and in the deep blue sky
swallows were flying to and fro. This earthly joy exasperated Madame
Desvarennes. She would have liked the world to be in mourning. She closed
the window hastily, and remained lost in her own reflections.

So everything was over! The great prosperity, the honor of the house,
everything was foundering in a moment. Even her daughter might escape
from her, and follow the infamous husband whom she adored in spite of his
faults--perhaps because of his very faults--and might drag on a weary
existence in a strange land, which would terminate in death.

For that sweet and delicate child could not live without material
comforts and mental ease, and her husband was doomed to go on from bad to
worse, and would drag her down with him! The mistress pictured her
daughter, that child whom she had brought up with the tenderest care,
dying on a pallet, and the husband, odious to the last, refusing her
admission to the room where Micheline was in agony.

A fearful