reasons which she would not even explain to him, nor the
entreaties of Risler, in whose ear Madame Chebe had mysteriously mumbled
her daughter's reasons, and who in spite of everything could not but
admire such a sacrifice.

"Don't revile her, I tell you! She's an angel!" he said to his brother,
striving to soothe him.

"Ah! yes, she is an angel," assented Madame Chebe with a sigh, so that
the poor betrayed lover had not even the right to complain. Driven to
despair, he determined to leave Paris, and as Grand Combe seemed too
near in his frenzied longing for flight, he asked and obtained an
appointment as overseer on the Suez Canal at Ismailia. He went away
without knowing, or caring to know aught of, Desiree's love; and yet,
when he went to bid her farewell, the dear little cripple looked up into
his face with her shy, pretty eyes, in which were plainly written the
words:

"I love you, if she does not."

But Frantz Risler did not know how to read what was written in those
eyes.

Fortunately, hearts that are accustomed to suffer have an infinite store
of patience. When her friend had gone, the lame girl, with her charming
morsel of illusion, inherited from her father and refined by her
feminine nature, returned bravely to her work, saying to herself:

"I will wait for him."

And thereafter she spread the wings of her birds to their fullest
extent, as if they were all going, one after another, to Ismailia in
Egypt. And that was a long distance!

Before sailing from Marseilles, young Risler wrote Sidonie a farewell
letter, at once laughable and touching, wherein, mingling the most
technical details with the most heartrending adieux, the unhappy
engineer declared that he was about to set sail, with a broken heart,
on the transport Sahib, "a sailing-ship and steamship combined,
with engines of fifteen-hundred-horse power," as if he hoped that so
considerable a capacity would make an impression on his ungrateful
betrothed, and cause her ceaseless remorse. But Sidonie had very
different matters on her mind.

She was beginning to be disturbed by Georges's silence. Since she left
Savigny she had heard from him only once. All her letters were left
unanswered. To be sure, she knew through Risler that Georges was very
busy, and that his uncle's death had thrown the management of the
factory upon him, imposing upon him a responsibility that was beyond his
strength. But to abandon her without a word!

From the window