CAYROL IS BLIND

Micheline, on her return to Paris, was a cause of anxiety to all her friends.  Morally and physically she was changed.  Her former gayety had disappeared.  In a few weeks she became thin and seemed to be wasting away.  Madame Desvarennes, deeply troubled, questioned her daughter, who answered, evasively, that she was perfectly well and had nothing to trouble her.  The mother called in Doctor Rigaud, although she did not believe in the profession, and, after a long conference, took him to see Micheline.  The doctor examined her, and declared it was nothing but debility.  Madame Desvarennes was assailed with gloomy forebodings.  She spent sleepless nights, during which she thought her daughter was dead; she heard the funeral dirges around her coffin.  This strong woman wept, not daring to show her anxiety, and trembling lest Micheline should suspect her fears.

Serge was careless and happy, treating the apprehensions of those surrounding him with perfect indifference.  He did not think his wife was ill—­a little tired perhaps, or it might be change of climate, nothing serious.  He had quite fallen into his old ways, spending every night at the club, and a part of the day in a little house in the Avenue Maillot, near the Bois de Boulogne.  He had found one charmingly furnished, and there he sheltered his guilty happiness.

It was here that Jeanne came, thickly veiled, since her return from Nice.  They each had a latchkey belonging to the door opening upon the Bois.  The one who arrived first waited for the other, within the house, whose shutters remained closed to deceive passers-by.  Then the hour of departure came; the hope of meeting again did not lessen their sadness at parting.

Jeanne seldom went to the Rue Saint-Dominique.  The welcome that Micheline gave her was the same as usual, but Jeanne thought she discovered a coldness which made her feel uncomfortable; and she did not care to meet her lover’s wife, so she made her visits scarce.

Cayrol came every morning to talk on business matters with Madame Desvarennes.  He had resumed the direction of his banking establishment.  The great scheme of the European Credit Company had been launched by Herzog, and promised great results.  Still Herzog caused Cayrol considerable anxiety.  Although a man of remarkable intelligence, he had a great failing, and by trying to grasp too much often ended by accomplishing nothing.  Scarcely was one scheme launched when another idea occurred to him, to which he sacrificed the former.

Thus, Herzog was projecting a still grander scheme to be based on the European Credit.  Cayrol, less sanguine, and more practical, was afraid of the new scheme, and when Herzog spoke to him about it, said that things were well enough for him as they were, and that he would not be implicated in any fresh financial venture however promising.

Cayrol’s refusal had vexed Herzog.  The German knew what opinion he was held in by the public, and that without the prestige of Cayrol’s name, and behind that, the house of Desvarennes, he would never have been able to float the European Credit as it had been.  He was too cunning not to know this, and Cayrol having declined to join him, he looked round in search of a suitable person to inspire the shareholders with confidence.