every way that we can. We have five draughtsmen now; hereafter
we will have but two. I will undertake to make the absence of the others
of no consequence by working at night myself. Furthermore, beginning
with this month, I abandon my interest in the firm. I will take my
salary as foreman as I took it before, and nothing more."

Fromont attempted to speak, but a gesture from his wife restrained him,
and Risler continued:

"I am no longer your partner, Georges. I am once more the clerk that I
never should have ceased to be. From this day our partnership articles
are cancelled. I insist upon it, you understand; I insist upon it. We
will remain in that relation to each other until the house is out of
difficulty and I can--But what I shall do then concerns me alone. This
is what I wanted to say to you, Georges. You must give your attention
to the factory diligently; you must show yourself, make it felt that you
are master now, and I believe there will turn out to be, among all our
misfortunes, some that can be retrieved."

During the silence that followed, they heard the sound of wheels in the
garden, and two great furniture vans stopped at the door.

"I beg your pardon," said Risler, "but I must leave you a moment. Those
are the vans from the public auction rooms; they have come to take away
my furniture from upstairs."

"What! you are going to sell your furniture too?" asked Madame Fromont.

"Certainly--to the last piece. I am simply giving it back to the firm.
It belongs to it."

"But that is impossible," said Georges. "I can not allow that."

Risler turned upon him indignantly.

"What's that? What is it that you can't allow?"

Claire checked him with an imploring gesture.

"True--true!" he muttered; and he hurried from the room to escape the
sudden temptation to give vent to all that was in his heart.

The second floor was deserted. The servants, who had been paid and
dismissed in the morning, had abandoned the apartments to the disorder
of the day following a ball; and they wore the aspect peculiar to places
where a drama has been enacted, and which are left in suspense, as it
were, between the events that have happened and those that are still
to happen. The open doors, the rugs lying in heaps in the corners, the
salvers laden with glasses, the preparations for the supper, the table
still set and untouched, the dust from the dancing on all the furniture,
its odor mingled with the fumes of punch, of wither