the full measure of his wrath upon her beloved, fabricating accusations against her as was his old habit, magnifying errors, and working upon the board of directors so as to take his revenge on her — and in the end to have them both dismissed from the staff of the bank.

Rose had scarcely fastened onto hope, and come within sight of certainty, and drawn near to a life of stability and safety, when fate turned against her once again, dealt her a crushing blow, and in the twinkling of an eye flung her back into the life of misery and vagrancy which seemed to have been created for her alone.

Paris swallowed her into its deep maw, and the waves of humilia-tion and want tossed her about. Albert set out to look for new work, and Rose began to spend from what she had saved and to look for work herself, never ceasing to encourage her beloved, spurring his energy, rousing his

resolve, and holding before him a bright future.

But the calamities of unemploy-ment worsened, the remnants of the money melted away, the weight of debts piled up, and hunger showed its black head and its sharp fang; and it seemed to Rose that Providence had cast her out, and that she stood between two courses: either to sell her virtue in order to live, or to make haste and throw herself into the river Seine.

Then she remembered her father, and his life of ease rose up before her eyes; and for the first time since her independence, for the first time since her flight, for the first time since her mother's wedding, she resolved to go to him and appeal to his fatherly feeling to save her and protect her — to save her from the grip of want, lest her foot slip and she lose herself, and lose her beloved, and lose everything.

Her father, Monsieur Bonnard, had married his second wife

out of greed for her money and intense admiration for her beauty. When the intoxication of admiration had passed, the greed for money still held him fast, and the woman became in his eyes a stumbling block in the path of his pleasures.

So he set about treating her as he had treated his first wife.

He wrung her money from her, then turned away from her; then he felt himself unable to go on with his pleasures for lack of means, so he grew irritable with her and cruel toward her, persecuting her and tyrannizing over her, and driving her, against her will, to seek help from her wealthy brother Armand.

He himself drew close to Armand, courted him, humored his base inclinations and his flagrant arrogance, and made of him an intimate friend.

Thus the ties between the two men grew firm, and Monsieur Bonnard went on scooping from