She was utterly happy, calm and contented.

But Madame Rosset fell ill.  Bertha hardly left her side.  She spent her nights with her, distracted with grief; even her husband seemed inconsolable.

One morning the doctor, after leaving the invalid’s bedside, took George and his wife aside, and told them that he considered Julie’s condition very grave.

As soon as he had gone the grief-stricken husband and wife sat down opposite each other and gave way to tears.  That night they both sat up with the patient.  Bertha tenderly kissed her friend from time to time, while George stood at the foot of the bed, his eyes gazing steadfastly on the invalid’s face.

The next day she was worse.

But toward evening she declared she felt better, and insisted that her friends should go back to their own apartment to dinner.

They were sitting sadly in the dining-room, scarcely even attempting to eat, when the maid gave George a note.  He opened it, turned pale as death, and, rising from the table, said to his wife in a constrained voice: 

“Wait for me.  I must leave you a moment.  I shall be back in ten minutes.  Don’t go away on any account.”

And he hurried to his room to get his hat.

Bertha waited for him, a prey to fresh anxiety.  But, docile in everything, she would not go back to her friend till he returned.

At length, as he did not reappear, it occurred to her to visit his room and see if he had taken his gloves.  This would show whether or not he had had a call to make.

She saw them at the first glance.  Beside them lay a crumpled paper, evidently thrown down in haste.

She recognized it at once as the note George had received.

And a burning temptation, the first that had ever assailed her urged her to read it and discover the cause of her husband’s abrupt departure.  Her rebellious conscience protester’ but a devouring and fearful curiosity prevailed.  She seized the paper, smoothed it out, recognized the tremulous, penciled writing as Julie’s, and read: 

“Come alone and kiss me, my poor dear.  I am dying.”

At first she did not understand, the idea of Julie’s death being her uppermost thought.  But all at once the true meaning of what she read burst in a flash upon her; this penciled note threw a lurid light upon her whole existence, revealed the whole infamous truth, all the treachery and perfidy of which she had been the victim.  She understood the long years of deceit, the way in which she had been made their puppet.  She saw them again, sitting side by side in the evening, reading by lamplight out of the same book, glancing at each other at the end of each page.

And her poor, indignant, suffering, bleeding heart was cast into the depths of a despair which knew no bounds.

Footsteps drew near; she fled, and shut herself in her own room.

Presently her husband called her: