“Your conduct toward us is worthy of all admiration, my good Risler; I know it well.”

“Oh!  Madame, if you could see him! he’s a saint,” said poor Sigismond, who, not daring to speak to his friend, was determined at all events to express his remorse.

“But aren’t you afraid?” continued Claire.  “Human endurance has its limits.  It may be that in presence of the man who has injured you so—­”

Risler took her hands, gazed into her eyes with grave admiration, and said: 

“You dear creature, who speak of nothing but the injury done to me!  Do you not know that I hate him as bitterly for his falseness to you?  But nothing of that sort has any existence for me at this moment.  You see in me simply a business man who wishes to have an understanding with his partner for the good of the firm.  So let him come down without the slightest fear, and if you dread any outbreak on my part, stay here with us.  I shall need only to look at my old master’s daughter to be reminded of my promise and my duty.”

“I trust you, my friend,” said Claire; and she went up to bring her husband.

The first minute of the interview was terrible.  Georges was deeply moved, humiliated, pale as death.  He would have preferred a hundred times over to be looking into the barrel of that man’s pistol at twenty paces, awaiting his fire, instead of appearing before him as an unpunished culprit and being compelled to confine his feelings within the commonplace limits of a business conversation.

Risler pretended not to look at him, and continued to pace the floor as he talked: 

“Our house is passing through a terrible crisis.  We have averted the disaster for to-day; but this is not the last of our obligations.  That cursed invention has kept my mind away from the business for a long while.  Luckily, I am free now, and able to attend to it.  But you must give your attention to it as well.  The workmen and clerks have followed the example of their employers to some extent.  Indeed, they have become extremely negligent and indifferent.  This morning, for the first time in a year, they began work at the proper time.  I expect that you will make it your business to change all that.  As for me, I shall work at my drawings again.  Our patterns are old-fashioned.  We must have new ones for the new machines.  I have great confidence in our presses.  The experiments have succeeded beyond my hopes.  We unquestionably have in them a means of building up our business.  I didn’t tell you sooner because I wished to surprise you; but we have no more surprises for each other, have we, Georges?”

There was such a stinging note of irony in his voice that Claire shuddered, fearing an outbreak; but he continued, in his natural tone.

“Yes, I think I can promise that in six months the Risler Press will begin to show magnificent results.  But those six months will be very hard to live through.  We must limit ourselves, cut down our expenses, save in every way that we can.  We have five draughtsmen now; hereafter we will have but two.  I will undertake to make the absence of the others of no consequence by working at night myself.  Furthermore, beginning with this month, I abandon my interest in the firm.  I will take my salary as foreman as I took it before, and nothing more.”