in that room just opposite that
we dined on that memorable evening."

And he pointed to the great windows of the salon of Cafe Vefour,
gleaming in the rays of the setting sun like the chandeliers at a
wedding feast.

"Ah! yes, true," murmured Sigismond, abashed. What an unlucky idea of
his to bring his friend to a place that recalled such painful things!

Risler, not wishing to cast a gloom upon their banquet, abruptly raised
his glass.

"Come! here's your health, my old comrade."

He tried to change the subject. But a moment later he himself led the
conversation back to it again, and asked Sigismond, in an undertone, as
if he were ashamed:

"Have you seen her?"

"Your wife? No, never."

"She hasn't written again?"

"No--never again."

"But you must have heard of her. What has she been doing these six
months? Does she live with her parents?"

"No."

Risler turned pale.

He hoped that Sidonie would have returned to her mother, that she would
have worked, as he had worked, to forget and atone. He had often thought
that he would arrange his life according to what he should learn of
her when he should have the right to speak of her; and in one of those
far-off visions of the future, which have the vagueness of a dream, he
sometimes fancied himself living in exile with the Chebes in an unknown
land, where nothing would remind him of his past shame. It was not a
definite plan, to be sure; but the thought lived in the depths of his
mind like a hope, caused by the need that all human creatures feel of
finding their lost happiness.

"Is she in Paris?" he asked, after a few moments' reflection.

"No. She went away three months ago. No one knows where she has gone."

Sigismond did not add that she had gone with her Cazaboni, whose name
she now bore, that they were making the circuit of the provincial cities
together, that her mother was in despair, never saw her, and heard
of her only through Delobelle. Sigismond did not deem it his duty to
mention all that, and after his last words he held his peace.

Risler, for his part, dared ask no further questions.

While they sat there, facing each other, both embarrassed by the long
silence, the military band began to play under the trees in the garden.
They played one of those Italian operatic overtures which seem to have
been written expressly for public open-air resorts; the swiftly-flowing
notes, as they rise into the air, blend with the call of the swallows