Now all was over for her; as for him, he remembered that he must be at the office at ten o'clock. She threw off her cloak before the glass, that she might behold herself once more in all her magnificence. Suddenly she uttered a cry of dismay--the necklace was gone! Her husband, already half-undressed, called out, "Anything wrong?" She turned wildly toward him: "I have--I have--I've lost Mme. Forestier's necklace!" He stood aghast: "Where? When? You haven't!" They looked in the folds of her dress, in the folds of her cloak, in her pocket, everywhere. They could not find it. "Are you sure," he said, "that you had it on when you left the ball?" "Yes; I felt it in the corridor of the palace." "But if you had lost it in the street, we should have heard it fall. It must be in the cab." "No doubt. Did you take his number?" "No. And didn't you notice it either?" "No." They looked at each other, terror-stricken. At last Loisel put on his clothes. "I shall go back on foot," he said, "over the whole route we came by, to see if I can't find it." He went out, and she sat waiting in her ball dress, too dazed to go to bed, cold, crushed, lifeless, unable to think. Her husband came back at seven o'clock. He had found nothing. He went to Police Headquarters, to the newspaper office--where he advertised a reward. He went to the cab companies--to every place, in fact, that seemed at all hopeful. She waited all day in the same awful state of mind at this terrible misfortune. Loisel returned at night with a wan, white face. He had found nothing. "Write immediately to your friend," said he, "that you have broken the clasp of her necklace, and that you have taken it to be mended. That will give us time to turn about." She wrote as he told her. By the end of the week they had given up all hope. Loisel, who looked five years older, said, "We must plan how we can replace the necklace." The next day they took the black satin box to the jeweler whose name was found inside. He referred to his books. "You did not buy that necklace of me, Madame. I can only have supplied the case." They went from jeweler to jeweler, hunting for a necklace like the lost one, trying to remember its appearance, heartsick with shame and misery. Finally, in a shop at the Palais Royal, they found a string of diamonds which looked to them just like the other. The price was forty thousand francs, but they could have it for thirty-six thousand. They begged the jeweler to keep it three days for them, and made an agreement with him that he should buy it back for thirty-four thousand, francs if they found the lost necklace before the last of February.