"Risler! Risler!"

He called in great anxiety:

"Risler, are you there? Are you asleep?"

There was no reply. He opened the door.

The room was cold. It was evident that the damp air had been blowing in
all night through the open window. At the first glance at the bed,
Sigismond thought: "He hasn't been in bed"--for the clothes were
undisturbed and the condition of the room, even in the most trivial
details, revealed an agitated vigil: the still smoking lamp, which he had
neglected to extinguish, the carafe, drained to the last drop by the
fever of sleeplessness; but the thing that filled the cashier with dismay
was to find the bureau drawer wide open in which he had carefully
bestowed the letter and package entrusted to him by his friend.

The letter was no longer there. The package lay on the table, open,
revealing a photograph of Sidonie at fifteen. With her high-necked
frock, her rebellious hair parted over the forehead, and the embarrassed
pose of an awkward girl, the little Chebe of the old days, Mademoiselle
Le Mire's apprentice, bore little resemblance to the Sidonie of to-day.
And that was the reason why Risler had kept that photograph, as a
souvenir, not of his wife, but of the "little one."

Sigismond was in great dismay.

"This is my fault," he said to himself. "I ought to have taken away the