him, turned his head to make sure that the servant had left the
room, then opened his satchel with great deliberation, as if to look for
a paper. Finding that he did not speak, she began in an impatient tone:

"I must inform you, Monsieur, that my husband is away and that I am not
familiar with any of his business matters."

Unmoved, with his hand still fumbling among his documents, the man
replied:

"I am quite well aware that Monsieur Jenkins is away, Madame--" he laid
particular stress on the words "Monsieur Jenkins,"--"especially as I
come from him."

She stared at him in terror.

"From him?"

"Alas! yes, Madame. The doctor--as you are doubtless aware--is in a very
embarrassed position for the moment. Unfortunate operations on the
Bourse, the downfall of a great financial institution in which he had
funds invested, the heavy burden of the Work of Bethlehem now resting on
him alone, all these disasters combined have compelled him to form an
heroic resolution. He is selling his house, his horses, everything that
he owns, and has given me a power of attorney to that end."

He had found at last what he was looking for, one of those stamped
papers, riddled with memoranda and words erased and interlined, into
which the unfeeling law sometimes crowds so much cowardice and
falsehood. Madame Jenkins was on the point of saying: "But I was here. I
would have done whatever he wished, carried out all his orders," when
she suddenly realized, from the visitor's lack of constraint, his
self-assured, almost insolent manner, that she too was involved in that
general overturn, in that throwing overboard of the expensive house and
useless chattels, and that her departure would be the signal for the
sale.

She rose abruptly. The man, still seated, continued:

"What I still have to say, Madame,"--Oh! she knew, she could have
dictated what he still had to say--"is so painful, so delicate--Monsieur
Jenkins is leaving Paris for a long time, and, fearing to expose you to
the perils and hazards of the new life upon which he is entering, to
take you away from a son of whom you are very fond, and in whose
interest it will be better perhaps--"

She no longer heard or saw him, but, given over to despair, to madness
perhaps, while he lost himself in involved sentences, she listened to a
voice within persistently singing the air which haunted her in that
terrible crash, as the drowning man's eyes retain the image of the last
object up