he know where
to get them.

The crisis which, a few hours before, seemed to him a chaos, an eddying
whirl in which he could see nothing distinctly and whose very confusion
was a source of hope, appeared to him at that moment with appalling
distinctness. An empty cash-box, closed doors, notes protested, ruin,
are the phantoms he saw whichever way he turned. And when, on top of
all the rest, came the thought of Sidonie's treachery, the wretched,
desperate man, finding nothing to cling to in that shipwreck, suddenly
uttered a sob, a cry of agony, as if appealing for help to some higher
power.

"Georges, Georges, it is I. What is the matter?"

His wife stood before him, his wife who now waited for him every night,
watching anxiously for his return from the club, for she still believed
that he passed his evenings there. That night she had heard him walking
very late in his room. At last her child fell asleep, and Claire,
hearing the father sob, ran to him.

Oh! what boundless, though tardy remorse overwhelmed him when he saw her
before him, so deeply moved, so lovely and so loving! Yes, she was in
very truth the true companion, the faithful friend. How could he have
deserted her? For a long, long time he wept upon her shoulder, unable
to speak. And it was fortunate that he did not speak, for he would have
told her all, all. The unhappy man felt the need of pouring out his
heart--an irresistible longing to accuse himself, to ask forgiveness, to
lessen the weight of the remorse that was crushing him.

She spared him the pain of uttering a word:

"You have been gambling, have you not? You have lost--lost heavily?"

He moved his head affirmatively; then, when he was able to speak, he
confessed that he must have a hundred thousand francs for the day after
the morrow, and that he did not know how to obtain them.

She did not reproach him. She was one of those women who, when face
to face with disaster, think only of repairing it, without a word of
recrimination. Indeed, in the bottom of her heart she blessed this
misfortune which brought him nearer to her and became a bond between
their two lives, which had long lain so far apart. She reflected a
moment. Then, with an effort indicating a resolution which had cost a
bitter struggle, she said:

"Not all is lost as yet. I will go to Savigny tomorrow and ask my
grandfather for the money."

He would never have dared to suggest that to her. Indeed, it would never
have occu