poussee, as the doctors say.  Pauline nursed him carefully till March set in; then he recovered a little, but he was fair from convalescent.  She wrote hopefully to her father; so did Georges; indeed both the young man and his wife, ignorant of the hold which the disease had really got upon him, thought things to be a great deal better than they actually were.  But as days went on and the cough continued, they made up their minds that St Raphael did not suit Georges, and resolved to go on to Nice.  March was already far advanced; Nice would not be expensive now.  So they went, but still Georges got no better.  He even began to get weaker; the cough `tore’ him, he said, and he leaned wearily on his wife’s arm when they walked out together.  Clearly he would not be able to return to Paris and to work that spring.  Pauline, too, was not well, the long nursing had told on her, and she had, besides, her own ailments, for already the prospect of motherhood had defined itself.  She wrote to her father that Georges was still poorly and that they should not return home till May.  But before the first ten days of April had passed, something of the true state of the case began to dawn on Saint-Cyr. `I shall never again be strong enough to work hard,’ he said to himself, `and I must work hard if I am to pass my doctorate examinations.  Meantime, all Pauline’s dot will be spent.  I may have to wait months before I can do any consecutive work; perhaps, even, I shall be unable to make a living by writing.  I am unfit for any study.  How can I get money—­and get it quickly—­for her sake and for the child’s?’

“Then the thought of the tables at Monte Carlo flashed into his mind.  Eight thousand francs of Pauline’s dot remained; too small a sum in itself to be of any permanent use, but enough to serve as capital for speculation in rouge et noir.  With good luck such a sum might produce a fortune.  The idea caught him and fascinated his thoughts sleeping and waking.  In his dreams he beheld piles of gold shining beside him on the green cloth, and by day as he wandered feebly along the Promenade des Anglais with Pauline he grew silent, feeding his sick heart with this new fancy.  One day he said to his wife:—­ ’Let us run over to Monte Carlo and see the playing; it will amuse us; and the gardens are lovely.  You will be delighted with the place.  Everybody says it is the most beautiful spot on the Riviera.’  So they went, and were charmed, but Georges did not play that day.  He stood by the tables and watched, while Pauline, too timid to venture into the saloons, and a little afraid of ‘le jeu,’ sat by the great fountain in the garden outside the casino.  Georges declared that evening as they sat over their tea at Nice that he had taken a fancy for beautiful Monaco, and that he would rather finish the month of April there than at Nice.  Pauline assented at once, and the next day they removed to