her own family.

But Monsieur Bonnard's eye was watchful, following the growth of the passion in Armand's soul and biding its time to exploit it. When the burden of love became too much for the young man, and Bonnard sensed in him a genuine resolve to declare his passion to the girl, he hurried to him, scowled in his face, turned cold toward him and stopped asking him for money; then he waved before him the duty of honor, and gave him the choice between marrying his daughter or turning away from her and leaving her to her fate.

Bonnard followed this measure with another: he advised his wife to spend a few days in one of the suburbs of Paris with a friend of hers, and then led his daughter

to believe that he was going to join his wife. So Rose stopped coming; Armand's passions blazed up, his vexation doubled, and his anger at himself and at Bonnard grew fierce; and in the end, to ease his anguish and to win the one he loved, he could do nothing but bow to Bonnard's will and consent to marry Rose.

Hardly had the hard-hearted father — corrupt of nature, criminal in his impulses — felt assured of his success, when the second obstacle rose before him, the one that still remained for him to clear away.

How was he to be rid of Albert?... How was he to drive this young man away from his daughter? How was he to destroy this love, nourished by sufferings

and forged in the fire of shared torment?

Not the least pity for his daughter stirred in him at that moment. He showed her no mercy. He gave no thought to the fate that awaited her. On the contrary, he hated her. He hated her because, in his view, she was a fool who could not tell love from life, and had built the edifice of her passion upon the shoulders of a poor, penniless man.

This thought inflamed him, and he feared he might collide with a strong emotion that would demolish all he had built; so he began to turn the matter over in his mind, pondering the surest blow that could strike this love in a mortal spot.

He did not hesitate. He rose at once, sat down at his desk,