"No! I tell you, mamma," she said to Madame Chebe one day, "I never will
consent to make a friend like her unhappy. I should suffer too much from
remorse,--poor Desiree! Haven't you noticed how badly she looks since I
came home; what a beseeching way she has of looking at me? No, I won't
cause her that sorrow; I won't take away her Frantz."

Even while she admired her daughter's generous spirit, Madame Chebe
looked upon that as a rather exaggerated sacrifice, and remonstrated with
her.

"Take care, my child; we aren't rich. A husband like Frantz doesn't turn
up every day."

"Very well! then I won't marry at all," declared Sidonie flatly, and,
deeming her pretext an excellent one, she clung persistently to it.
Nothing could shake her determination, neither the tears shed by Frantz,
who was exasperated by her refusal to fulfil her promise, enveloped as it
was in vague reasons which she would not even explain to him, nor the
entreaties of Risler, in whose ear Madame Chebe had mysteriously mumbled
her daughter's reasons, and who in spite of everything could not but
admire such a sacrifice.

"Don't revile her, I tell you! She's an angel!" he said to his brother,
striving to soothe him.

"Ah! yes, she is an angel," assented Madame Chebe with a sigh, so that
the poor betrayed lover had not even the right to complain. Driven to
despair, he determined to leave Paris, and as Grand Combe seemed too near
in his frenzied longing for flight, he asked and obtained an appointment
as overseer on the Suez Canal at Ismailia. He went away without knowing,