in a few days."

Then she talked with the Abbé and with Miss Smith, and had tender,
pretty words for all her children; those sweet spoiling mother's ways
which unfold little hearts.

When dinner was over, she went into the drawing-room with all her little
following. She made the elder ones chatter, and when their bedtime came
she kissed them for a long time, and then went alone into her room.

She waited, for she had no doubt that he would come, and she made up her
mind then, as her children were not with her, to defend her human skin,
as she defended her life as a woman of the world; and in the pocket of
her dress she put the little loaded revolver, which she had bought a few
days previously. The hours went by, the hours struck, and every sound
was hushed in the house. Only the cabs continued to rumble through the
streets, but their noise was only heard vaguely through the shuttered
and curtained windows.

She waited, energetic and nervous, without any fear of him now, ready
for anything, and almost triumphant, for she had found means of
torturing him continually, during every moment of his life.

But the first gleams of dawn came in through the fringe at the bottom of
her curtains, without his having come into her room, and then she awoke
to the fact, much to her stupefaction, that he was not coming. Having
locked and bolted her door, for greater security, she went to bed at
last, and remained there, with her eyes open, thinking, and barely
understanding it all, without being able to guess what he was going to
do.