the passion which day by day, nay, hour by hour, tightened its hold upon
him. She would have died sooner than permit the word "gambler" to pass
her lips. Besides, did not her eyes tell Ascher what she suffered? Those
very eyes were, according to Ascher, the cause of his rapid journey
along the road to ruin.

"Why do you look at me so, Gudule?" he would testily ask her, at the
slightest provocation.

Often when, as he explained, he had had "a specially good week," he
would bring home the costliest gifts for his children. Gudule, however,
made no use whatever of these trinkets, neither for herself nor for the
children. She put the things away in drawers and cupboards, and never
looked at them, more especially as she observed that, under some pretext
or another, Ascher generally took those glittering things away again,
"in order to exchange them for others," he said: as often as not never
replacing them at all.

"Gudule!" he said one day, when he happened to be in a particularly good
humor, "why do you let the key remain in the door of that bureau where
you keep so many valuables?"

And again Gudule regarded him with those unfathomable eyes.

"There, you 're... looking at me again!" he exclaimed with sudden
vehemence.

"They 're safe enough in the cupboard," Gudule said, smiling, "why
should I lock it?"

"Gudule, do you mean to say..." he cried, raising his hand as for a
blow. Then he fell back in his chair, and his frame was shaken with
sobs.

"Gudule, my heart's love," he cried, "I am not worthy that your eyes
should rest on me. Everywhere, wherever I go, they look at me, those
eyes... and that is my ruin. If business is bad, your eyes ask me, 'Why
did you mix yourself up with these things, without a thought of wife
or children?'... Then I feel as if some evil spirit possessed me and
tortured my soul. Oh, why can't you look at me again as you did when you
were my bride?--then you looked so happy, so lovely! At other times I
think: 'I shall yet grasp fortune with both hands... and then I can face
my Gudule's eyes again.' But now, now... oh, don't look at me, Gudule!"

There spoke the self-reproaching voice, which sometimes burst forth
unbidden from a suffering soul.

As for Gudule, she already knew how to appreciate this cry of her
husband's conscience at its true value. It was not that she felt one
moment's doubt as to its sincerity, but she knew that so far as it
affected the future, it was a mere cry and n