s!"--a thing that the little man would have taken good care
not to do himself, as he had an abject fear of gendarmes. In a moment
the storm would abate. The tired women, their hair disarranged by the
wind, would fall asleep on the benches. There were torn and ragged
dresses, low-necked white gowns, covered with dust.

The air they breathed consisted mainly of dust. It lay upon their
clothes, rose at every step, obscured the light of the lamp, vexed one's
eyes, and raised a sort of cloud before the tired faces. The cars which
they entered at last, after hours of waiting, were saturated with it
also. Sidonie would open the window, and look out at the dark fields, an
endless line of shadow. Then, like innumerable stars, the first lanterns
of the outer boulevards appeared near the fortifications.

So ended the ghastly day of rest of all those poor creatures. The sight
of Paris brought back to each one's mind the thought of the morrow's
toil. Dismal as her Sunday had been, Sidonie began to regret that it
had passed. She thought of the rich, to whom all the days of their lives
were days of rest; and vaguely, as in a dream, the long park avenues of
which she had caught glimpses during the day appeared to her thronged
with those happy ones of earth, strolling on the fine gravel, while
outside the gate, in the dust of the highroad, the poor man's Sunday
hurried swiftly by, having hardly time to pause a moment to look and
envy.

Such was little Chebe's life from thirteen to seventeen.

The years passed, but did not bring with them the slightest change.
Madame Chebe's cashmere was a little more threadbare, the little lilac
frock had undergone a few additional repairs, and that was all. But, as
Sidonie grew older, Frantz, now become a young man, acquired a habit of
gazing at her silently with a melting expression, of paying her loving
attentions that were visible to everybody, and were unnoticed by none
save the girl herself.

Indeed, nothing aroused the interest of little Chebe. In the work-room
she performed her task regularly, silently, without the slightest
thought of the future or of saving. All that she did seemed to be done
as if she were waiting for something.

Frantz, on the other hand, had been working for some time with
extraordinary energy, the ardor of those who see something at the end of
their efforts; so that, at the age of twenty-four, he graduated second
in his class from the Ecole Centrale, as an engineer.