It was four o'clock in the morning when the last of the guests departed. Jean Beraldi and his wife stood before the terrace of their spacious mansion, on their faces the traces of an artificial smile — that smile they had grown accustomed to affecting on many an evening throughout fifteen years of brilliant life.

Jean was still young; he stood erect, slender in his elegant dress. As for her, she was an Italian of alluring figure, radiating beauty in her gown of pure blue. The pearls of her necklace glittered on her pale neck like seashells on the sand. She wore no ornament but this pearl necklace and her diamond wedding ring. After the last motorcar had cast its silver beams over the palms of the garden, Jean Beraldi and his wife went indoors in silence and made their way with slow steps toward the great hall, which remained ablaze with lights. They halted before the dance floor, whose waxed surface showed the traces of this evening so full of life and dancing and champagne — traces like the furrows on the faces of the old... They sank into a long reverie, then cast a farewell glance at the painted ceilings, the chandeliers, and the mirrors, and moved away, walking on the tips of their toes as though they were walking in the house of one departed! This was the last party they would ever give, and that night was the last night they would spend in Monte Carlo, in this beautiful mansion where they had been happy after their own fashion, as people whose very home was wealth, and where they had drawn close to the most famous and richest personalities of the world — leaders, princes, and artists.

The suitcases stood in rows in the bedroom suite to which they went up... In a few hours one of their motorcars would carry them to the Blue Train bound for Paris, to spend twenty-four hours there completing the final preparations for the journey to Brazil, where Jean Beraldi was to carry out a scientific mission entrusted to him by the Prince of Monaco. Quite possibly they would never return

to Europe again, unless fortune should smile on them anew...

Six months had passed since Jean Beraldi's bankruptcy. People knew that he had lost his fortune in a great business deal. He had been advised to sell what remained to him of goods and property at the time, when he could still have saved half his capital; but he refused and held out, like the gambler who feels his luck beginning to slip from between his fingers yet goes on gambling, believing that luck will come back to him at the last moment.

The blow was very harsh, and the Beraldis tried to hide it from people as far as they could. A friend made the matter easier for them by buying their mansion in Monte Carlo together with its precious contents, and then helping them sell the rest of their possessions in Paris to trustworthy persons. Then the Prince of Monaco invented the scientific mission that would allow Jean to vanish like a glittering meteor while still at the height of his glory — the mission that would enable him to earn his living in Brazil in a modest, honorable way. Jean and his wife preferred taking refuge in Brazil to humiliation and collapse... People knew, roughly, the truth of the situation; yet not one single person had been able to notice any change in the outward appearance of their life in this last period — and that, for them, was the most important thing of all.

Then several months passed after the banks notified Jean Beraldi that the sums remaining to him from the liquidation, which had allowed him to keep his life in balance, were on the point of running out. That was in the month of September, while the great newspapers published the news that his departure for Brazil would take place in the month of March, on a scientific mission of great moment... What a problem! How could they keep up the course of their luxurious life until that date, with the winter season coming on and bringing with it the social obligations and the expenses that could not be escaped if appearances were to be saved?.. Could they manage it by giving up two of their