to nothing but facts. He was irritated by this mystery which his penetration could not clear up, so he tore open the envelope and read: SIR: _I have never loved you, and you knew it. What is a woman’s heart that it should be taken possession of by a legal document? I have stood my slavery for nine years because I loved no one else. To-day everything is changed: I set myself free in loyalty to myself, refusing to be shared. What is there to prevent me? In the very beginning of our marriage you objected to having children. A little hand held out to me might have been enough to enchain me completely, but our house is empty, and no one has any need of me. You thought me worth one hundred thousand francs in our marriage contract. You will think it natural that I take away with me the price paid for me. I have already paid for it myself with my youth. In leaving you I pardon you. Good-bye._ EDITH DANNEMARIE. For Mr. Frasne, whether from professional habit or a positive turn of mind, everything in life, even sentiment, translated itself into acts and obligations. Our characters rule us even in our suffering: in this shipwreck in which his life was going down he was for the moment conscious only of the loss of his wife, not his money, even though he was not prodigal with money; but to revive his past and exasperate his sorrow he went instinctively to an old portfolio and got out the marriage contract to which the letter made allusion. With this bit of stamped paper he evoked more clearly the great passion that had taken his later youth in its grasp. He saw again at the church door a young girl, delicate and supple, whose movements and eyes betrayed the fever in her veins. It was at Tronche, near Grenoble, his native country. He came there each summer for his vacation, from Paris, when he was head clerk. He could not make up his mind, though on the brink of forty, to leave the capital for good, and buy a practice in Dauphiné. According to inquiries that he made, Edith Dannemarie lived with her mother in the neighbourhood, in a little house to which the two women had retired almost without resources after the death of the head of the family, who had ruined himself with cards. A young country girl with those eyes ought to be easy prey. Two years in succession he had attempted to get hold of her. She was waiting for a prince, for her fancy flew high, and was losing her patience with the long waiting, solitude keeping her imagination warm. Accordingly she rebuffed him, but not severely enough to send him away for good. She had discovered without preparatory studies the art of promising and refusing, and she practised it on a man whom conquests in an easy and sensually minded world must have made more irritable and nervous in the face of coquetry. He should have known himself defeated, but his desire was greater than his interest.