brought in barely two
francs fifty for twelve hours' work.

And Delobelle continued to grow fat in the same degree that his "sainted
wife" grew thin. At the very moment when some one knocked hurriedly at
his door he had just discovered a fragrant soup 'au fromage', which had
been kept hot in the ashes on the hearth. The actor, who had been
witnessing at Beaumarchais some dark-browed melodrama drenched with gore
even to the illustrated headlines of its poster, was startled by that
knock at such an advanced hour.

"Who is there?" he asked in some alarm.

"It is I, Sidonie. Open the door quickly."

She entered the room, shivering all over, and, throwing aside her wrap,
went close to the stove where the fire was almost extinct. She began to
talk at once, to pour out the wrath that had been stifling her for an
hour, and while she was describing the scene in the factory, lowering her
voice because of Madame Delobelle, who was asleep close by, the
magnificence of her costume in that poor, bare, fifth floor, the dazzling
whiteness of her disordered finery amid the heaps of coarse hats and the
wisps of straw strewn about the room, all combined to produce the effect
of a veritable drama, of one of those terrible upheavals of life when
rank, feelings, fortunes are suddenly jumbled together.

"Oh! I never shall return home. It is all over. Free--I am free!"

"But who could have betrayed you to your husband?" asked the actor.

"It was Frantz! I am sure it was Frantz. He wouldn't have believed it
from anybody else. Only last evening a letter came from Egypt. Oh! how he
treated me before that woman! To force me to kneel! But I'll be revenged.
Luckily I took something to revenge myself with before I came away."

And the smile of former days played about the corners of her pale lips.

The old strolling player listened to it all with deep interest.
Notwithstanding his compassion for that poor devil of a Risler, and for
Sidonie herself, for that matter, who seemed to him, in theatrical
parlance, "a beautiful culprit," he could not help viewing the affair
from a purely scenic standpoint, and finally cried out, carried away by
his hobby:

"What a first-class situation for a fifth act!"

She did not bear him. Absorbed by some evil thought, which made her smile
in anticipation, she stretched out to the fire her dainty shoes,
saturated with snow, and her openwork stockings.

"Well, what do you propose to do now?" Delobelle asked