ew employe of the
house of Fromont prove himself!

Every day his lamp was the first to appear at, and the last to disappear
from, the windows of the factory. A little room had been arranged for
him under the eaves, exactly like the one he had formerly occupied with
Frantz, a veritable Trappist's cell, furnished with an iron cot and a
white wooden table, that stood under his brother's portrait. He led the
same busy, regular, quiet life as in those old days.

He worked constantly, and had his meals brought from the same little
creamery. But, alas! the disappearance forever of youth and hope
deprived those memories of all their charm. Luckily he still had Frantz
and Madame "Chorche," the only two human beings of whom he could think
without a feeling of sadness. Madame "Chorche" was always at hand,
always trying to minister to his comfort, to console him; and Frantz
wrote to him often, without mentioning Sidonie, by the way. Risler
supposed that some one had told Frantz of the disaster that had befallen
him, and he too avoided all allusion to the subject in his letters.
"Oh! when I can send for him to come home!" That was his dream, his sole
ambition: to restore the factory and recall his brother.

Meanwhile the days succeeded one another, always the same to him in the
restless activity of business and the heartrending loneliness of his
grief. Every morning he walked through the workshops, where the profound
respect he inspired and his stern, silent countenance had reestablished
the orderly conditions that had been temporarily disturbed. In the
beginning there had been much gossip, and various explanations of
Sidonie's departure had been made. Some said that she had eloped with
a lover, others that Risler had turned her out. The one fact that upset
all conjectures was the attitude of the two partners toward each other,
apparently as unconstrained as before. Sometimes, however, when they
were talking together in the office, with no one by, Risler would
suddenly start convulsively, as a vision of the crime passed before his
eyes.

Then he would feel a mad longing to spring upon the villain, seize him
by the throat, strangle him without mercy; but the thought of
Madame "Chorche" was always there to restrain him. Should he be less
courageous, less master of himself than that young wife? Neither Claire,
nor Fromont, nor anybody else suspected what was in his mind. They could
barely detect a severity, an inflexibility in his