“Charming!” she cried, clapping her hands.  “No more preoccupation; no more cares.  Look into my eyes, dear Victor, and think only of the present hour, of the joy of being together, of our love.”

She reached her hand over the table, and he pressed it in his.

“Very well.”  The dinner continued gayly, Saniel replying to Phillis’s smiles, who would not permit the conversation to languish.  She helped him to each dish, poured out his wine, leaving her chair occasionally to put a piece of wood on the fire, and such shoutings and laughter had never been heard before in that office.

However, she noticed that, little by little, Saniel’s face, that relaxed one moment, was the next clouded by the preoccupation and bitterness that she had tried hard to chase away.  She would make a new effort.

“Does not this charming little dinner give you the wish to repeat it?”

“How?  Where?”

“As I am able to come this evening without making mamma uneasy, I shall find some excuse to come again next week.”

He shook his head.

“Have you engagements for the whole of next week?” she asked with uneasiness.

“Where shall I be next week, to-morrow, in a few days?”

“You alarm me.  Explain, I beg of you.  O Victor, have pity!  Do not leave me in suspense.”

“You are right; I ought to tell you everything, and not let your tender heart torment itself, trying to explain my preoccupation.”

“If you have cares, do you not esteem me enough to let me share them with you?  You know that I love you; you only, to-day, to-morrow, forever!”

Saniel had not left her ignorant of the difficulties of his position, but he had not entered into details, preferring to speak of his hopes rather than of his present misery.

The story that he had already told to Glady and Caffie he now told to Phillis, adding what had passed with the concierge, the wine-seller, the coal man, and Joseph.

She listened, stupefied.

“He took your coat?” she murmured.

“That was what he came for.”

“And to-morrow?”

“Ah! to-morrow—­to-morrow!”

“Working so hard as you have, how did you come to such a pass?”

“Like you, I believed in the virtue of work, and look at me!  Because I felt within me a will that nothing could weaken, a strength that nothing could fatigue, a courage that nothing could, dishearten, I imagined that I was armed for battle in such a way that I should never be conquered, and I am conquered, as much by the fault of circumstances as by my own—­”

“And in what are you to blame, poor dear?”