p seeing my friends and everybody I know
who is young and agreeable, beginning with Georges and ending with you.
For you know, my dear, you weren't agreeable to him, and he would have
liked to dismiss you with the rest."

The one thing that Sidonie did not mention--and it was the deepest cause
of her anger against Frantz--was that he had frightened her terribly by
threatening to tell her husband her guilty secret. From that moment she
had felt decidedly ill at ease, and her life, her dear life, which
she so petted and coddled, had seemed to her to be exposed to serious
danger. Yes, the thought that her husband might some day be apprized of
her conduct positively terrified her.

That blessed letter put an end to all her fears. It was impossible now
for Frantz to expose her, even in the frenzy of his disappointment,
knowing that she had such a weapon in her hands; and if he did speak,
she would show the letter, and all his accusations would become in
Risler's eyes calumny pure and simple. Ah, master judge, we have you
now!

"I am born again--I am born again!" she cried to Madame Dobson. She ran
out into the garden, gathered great bouquets for her salon, threw
the windows wide open to the sunlight, gave orders to the cook, the
coachman, the gardener. The house must be made to look beautiful, for
Georges was coming back, and for a beginning she organized a grand
dinner-party for the end of the week.

The next evening Sidonie, Risler, and Madame Dobson were together in
the salon. While honest Risler turned the leaves of an old handbook of
mechanics, Sidonie sang to Madame Dobson's accompaniment. Suddenly she
stopped in the middle of her aria and burst into a peal of laughter. The
clock had just struck ten.

Risler looked up quickly.

"What are you laughing at?"

"Nothing-an idea that came into my head," replied Sidonie, winking of
Madame Dobson and pointing at the clock.

It was the hour appointed for the meeting, and she was thinking of her
lover's torture as he waited for her to come.

Since the return of the messenger bringing from Sidonie the "yes" he
had so feverishly awaited, a great calm had come over his troubled mind,
like the sudden removal of a heavy burden. No more uncertainty, no more
clashing between passion and duty.

Not once did it occur to him that on the other side of the landing some
one was weeping and sighing because of him. Not once did he think of his
brother's despair, of the ghastly dra