u seen her?"

"Your wife? No, never."

"She hasn't written again?"

"No--never again."

"But you must have heard of her. What has she been doing these six
months? Does she live with her parents?"

"No."

Risler turned pale.

He hoped that Sidonie would have returned to her mother, that she would
have worked, as he had worked, to forget and atone. He had often thought
that he would arrange his life according to what he should learn of her
when he should have the right to speak of her; and in one of those
far-off visions of the future, which have the vagueness of a dream, he
sometimes fancied himself living in exile with the Chebes in an unknown
land, where nothing would remind him of his past shame. It was not a
definite plan, to be sure; but the thought lived in the depths of his
mind like a hope, caused by the need that all human creatures feel of
finding their lost happiness.

"Is she in Paris?" he asked, after a few moments' reflection.

"No. She went away three months ago. No one knows where she has gone."

Sigismond did not add that she had gone with her Cazaboni, whose name she
now bore, that they were making the circuit of the provincial cities
together, that her mother was in despair, never saw her, and heard of her
only through Delobelle. Sigismond did not deem it his duty to mention all
that, and after his last words he held his peace.

Risler, for his part, dared ask no further questions.

While they sat there, facing each other, both embarrassed by the long
silence, the military band began to play under the trees in the garden.
They played one of those Italian operatic overtures which seem to have
been written expressly for public open-air resorts; the swiftly-flowing
notes, as they rise into the air, blend with the call of the swallows and
the silvery plash of the fountain. The blaring brass brings out in bold
relief the mild warmth of the closing hours of those summer days, so long
and enervating in Paris; it seems as if one could hear nothing else. The
distant rumbling of wheels, the cries of children playing, the footsteps
of the promenaders are wafted away in those resonant, gushing, refreshing
waves of melody, as useful to the people of Paris as the daily watering
of their streets. On all sides the faded flowers, the trees white with
dust, the faces made pale and wan by the heat, all the sorrows, all the
miseries of a great city, sitting dreamily, with bowed head, on the
benches in the g