en he saw it he felt the
same sensation he had felt in the bedroom upstairs.

All his love, all the hot wrath of the betrayed husband poured back into
his heart with the frantic force that makes assassins. What was she
writing to him? What lie had she invented now? He was about to open the
letter; then he paused. He realized that, if he should read that, it
would be all over with his courage; so he leaned over to the old cashier,
and said in an undertone:

"Sigismond, old friend, will you do me a favor?"

"I should think so!" said the worthy man enthusiastically. He was so
delighted to hear his friend speak to him in the kindly voice of the old
days.

"Here's a letter someone has written me which I don't wish to read now. I
am sure it would interfere with my thinking and living. You must keep it
for me, and this with it."

He took from his pocket a little package carefully tied, and handed it to
him through the grating.

"That is all I have left of the past, all I have left of that woman. I
have determined not to see her, nor anything that reminds me of her,
until my task here is concluded, and concluded satisfactorily,--I need
all my intelligence, you understand. You will pay the Chebes' allowance.
If she herself should ask for anything, you will give her what she needs.
But you will never mention my name. And you will keep this package safe
for me until I ask you for it."

Sigismond locked the letter and the package in a secret drawer of his
desk with other valuable papers. Risler returned at once to his
correspondence; but all the time he had before his eyes the slender
English letters traced by a little hand which he had so often and so
ardently pressed to his heart.

CHAPTER XXIII

CAFE CHANTANT

What a rare, what a conscientious clerk did that new employe of the house
of Fromont prove himself!

Every day his lamp was the first to appear at, and the last to disappear
from, the windows of the factory. A little room had been arranged for him
under the eaves, exactly like the one he had formerly occupied with
Frantz, a veritable Trappist's cell, furnished with an iron cot and a
white wooden table, that stood under his brother's portrait. He led the
same busy, regular, quiet life as in those old days.

He worked constantly, and had his meals brought from the same little
creamery. But, alas! the disappearance forever of youth and hope deprived
those memories of all their charm. Luckily he still had