ly
grateful, but I need not be tied to your apron-strings until I die! You
have a husband and I a wife. Neither of us is free; it was all a
caprice, and now it is at an end!"

She said: "How brutal you are, how coarse and villainous! No, I was no
longer a young girl, but I had never loved, never wavered in my
dignity."

He interrupted her: "I know it, you have told me that twenty times; but
you have had two children."

She drew back as if she had been struck: "Oh, Georges!" And pressing
her hands to her heart, she burst into tears.

When she began to weep, he took his hat: "Ah, you are crying again!
Good evening! Is it for this that you sent for me?"

She took a step forward in order to bar the way, and drawing a
handkerchief from her pocket she wiped her eyes. Her voice grew
steadier: "No, I came to--to give you--political news--to give you the
means of earning fifty thousand francs--or even more if you wish to."

Suddenly softened he asked: "How?"

"By chance last evening I heard a conversation between my husband and
Laroche. Walter advised the minister not to let you into the secret for
you would expose it."

Du Roy placed his hat upon a chair and listened attentively.

"They are going to take possession of Morocco!"

"Why, I lunched with Laroche this morning, and he told me the cabinet's
plans!"

"No, my dear, they have deceived you, because they feared their secret
would be made known."

"Sit down," said Georges.

He sank into an armchair, while she drew up a stool and took her seat
at his feet. She continued:

"As I think of you continually, I pay attention to what is talked of
around me," and she proceeded to tell him what she had heard relative
to the expedition to Tangiers which had been decided upon the day that
Laroche assumed his office; she told him how they had little by little
bought up, through agents who aroused no suspicions, the Moroccan loan,
which had fallen to sixty-four or sixty-five francs; how when the
expedition was entered upon the French government would guarantee the
debt, and their friends would make fifty or sixty millions.

He cried: "Are you sure of that?"

She replied: "Yes, I am sure."

He continued: "That is indeed fine! As for that rascal of a Laroche,
let him beware! I will get his ministerial carcass between my fingers
yet!"

Then, after a moment's reflection, he muttered: "One might profit by
that!"

"You too can buy some stock," said she; "it is only se