joy a temporary vogue, and cause
all Paris to go from one end of Paris to the other for a season. In
Risler's eyes the tickets came from Madame Dobson; she had as many as she
chose to the theatres where operas were given. The poor wretch had no
suspicion that one of those boxes for an important "first night" had
often cost his partner ten or fifteen Louis.

In the evening, when his wife went away, always splendidly attired, he
would gaze admiringly at her, having no suspicion of the cost of her
costumes, certainly none of the man who paid for them, and would await
her return at his table by the fire, busy with his drawings, free from
care, and happy to be able to say to himself, "What a good time she is
having!"

On the floor below, at the Fromonts', the same comedy was being played,
but with a transposition of parts. There it was the young wife who sat by
the fire. Every evening, half an hour after Sidonie's departure, the
great gate swung open to give passage to the Fromont coupe conveying
Monsieur to his club. What would you have? Business has its demands. All
the great deals are arranged at the club, around the bouillotte table,
and a man must go there or suffer the penalty of seeing his business fall
off. Claire innocently believed it all. When her husband had gone, she
felt sad for a moment. She would have liked so much to keep him with her
or to go out leaning on his arm, to seek enjoyment with him. But the
sight of the child, cooing in front of the fire and kicking her little
pink feet while she was being undressed, speedily soothed the mother.
Then the eloquent word "business," the merchant's reason of state, was
always at hand to help her to resign herself.

Georges and Sidonie met at the theatre. Their feeling at first when they
were together was one of satisfied vanity. People stared at them a great
deal. She was really pretty now, and her irregular but attractive
features, which required the aid of all the eccentricities of the
prevailing style in order to produce their full effect, adapted
themselves to them so perfectly that you would have said they were
invented expressly for her. In a few moments they went away, and Madame
Dobson was left alone in the box. They had hired a small suite on the
Avenue Gabriel, near the 'rond-point' of the Champs Elysees--the dream of
the young women at the Le Mire establishment--two luxuriously furnished,
quiet rooms, where the silence of the wealthy quarter, disturbed o