new day
emerging, luminous and smiling, from the dense mists of the night. From a
distance he descried his brother's house, already awake, the open blinds
and the flowers on the window-sills. He wandered about some time before
he could summon courage to enter.

Suddenly some one hailed him from the shore:

"Ah! Monsieur Frantz. How early you are today!"

It was Sidonie's coachman taking his horses to bathe in the river.

"Has anything happened at the house?" inquired Frantz tremblingly.

"No, Monsieur Frantz."

"Is my brother at home?"

"No, Monsieur slept at the factory."

"No one sick?"

"No, Monsieur Frantz, no one, so far as I know."

Thereupon Frantz made up his mind to ring at the small gate. The gardener
was raking the paths. The house was astir; and, early as it was, he heard
Sidonie's voice as clear and vibrating as the song of a bird among the
rose-bushes of the facade.

She was talking with animation. Frantz, deeply moved, drew near to
listen.

"No, no cream. The 'cafe parfait' will be enough. Be sure that it's well
frozen and ready at seven o'clock. Oh! about an entree--let us see--"

She was holding council with her cook concerning the famous dinner-party
for the next day. Her brother-in-law's sudden appearance did not
disconcert her.

"Ah! good-morning, Frantz," she said very coolly. "I am at your service
directly. We're to have some people to dinner to-morrow, customers of the
firm, a grand business dinner. You'll excuse me, won't you?"

Fresh and smiling, in the white ruffles of her trailing morning-gown and
her little lace cap, she continued to discuss her menu, inhaling the cool
air that rose from the fields and the river. There was not the slightest
trace of chagrin or anxiety upon that tranquil face, which was a striking
contrast to the lover's features, distorted by a night of agony and
fatigue.

For a long quarter of an hour Frantz, sitting in a corner of the salon,
saw all the conventional dishes of a bourgeois dinner pass before him in
their regular order, from the little hot pates, the sole Normande and the
innumerable ingredients of which that dish is composed, to the Montreuil
peaches and Fontainebleau grapes.

At last, when they were alone and he was able to speak, he asked in a
hollow voice:

"Didn't you receive my letter?"

"Why, yes, of course."

She had risen to go to the mirror and adjust a little curl or two
entangled with her floating ribbons, and continued,