hat he carried with
him--a love which the unchanging room, the sedentary, stagnant life, kept
intact with all its bitter perfume, whereas his would gradually fade away
and vanish in the fresh air of the outer world.

It grows darker and darker. A great wave of melancholy envelops the poor
girl with the falling darkness of that balmy evening. The blissful gleam
from the past dies away as the last glimmer of daylight vanishes in the
narrow recess of the window, where her mother still stands leaning on the
sill.

Suddenly the door opens. Some one is there whose features can not be
distinguished. Who can it be? The Delobelles never receive calls. The
mother, who has turned her head, thinks at first that some one has come
from the shop to get the week's work.

"My husband has just gone to your place, Monsieur. We have nothing here.
Monsieur Delobelle has taken everything."

The man comes forward without speaking, and as he approaches the window
his features can be distinguished. He is a tall, solidly built fellow
with a bronzed face, a thick, red beard, and a deep voice, and is a
little slow of speech.

"Ah! so you don't know me, Mamma Delobelle?"

"Oh! I knew you at once, Monsieur Frantz," said Desiree, very calmly, in
a cold, sedate tone.

"Merciful heavens! it's Monsieur Frantz."

Quickly Mamma Delobelle runs to the lamp, lights it, and closes the
window.

"What! it is you, is it, my dear Frantz?" How coolly she says it, the
little rascal! "I knew you at once." Ah, the little iceberg! She will
always be the same.

A veritable little iceberg, in very truth. She is very pale, and her hand
as it lies in Frantz's is white and cold.

She seems to him improved, even more refined than before. He seems to her
superb, as always, with a melancholy, weary expression in the depths of
his eyes, which makes him more of a man than when he went away.

His weariness is due to his hurried journey, undertaken immediately on
his receipt of Sigismond's letter. Spurred on by the word dishonor, he
had started instantly, without awaiting his leave of absence, risking his
place and his future prospects; and, hurrying from steamships to
railways, he had not stopped until he reached Paris. Reason enough for
being weary, especially when one has travelled in eager haste to reach
one's destination, and when one's mind has been continually beset by
impatient thoughts, making the journey ten times over in incessant doubt
and fear and per