reflection, the feeble hope which the telegram had raised, flew away as do birds which by chance have flown into a room and are eager to find their way into the open. A little breeze was coming in through the open windows, after the day's intense heat. In the month of June, the light lingers late, and it was not yet evening, only that intermediate hour of twilight when the weary sun is slowly preparing to sink below the horizon. Madame Derize noticed a little regretfully this menace of a finality which was not immediate, but quite in keeping with her meditations. It was the hour she chose to visit the neighboring cemetery of Saint Roch. The dead can always wait. She contented herself with putting a little water in a vase on the bureau in his room, before a photograph, which, with time, had faded and could never have been very clear. And she even spread the flowers so that the picture was in evidence. "There," she thought, "his father will speak to him. Ah, if only he might have brought him up." She lived in the eastern section of the town which is almost part of the country. Parallel with the old ramparts runs the Boulevard des Adieux, with its tall trees and its little hills covered with grass. The gate which crosses it is called by the same melancholy name, and leads to the beautiful "L'Ile Verte" that must be traversed in order to reach the cemetery. All the funeral processions pass this way. The consciousness of death is ever present. For this reason, it is a section not very attractive to prospective tenants, despite the view of the foliage, the green slopes on the left between the branches of birches and lime trees, Mont-Rachais and Saint-Eynard, whose cliffs take on, under the setting sun, a brilliant color, alternately pink and violet.