"I beg your pardon," said Risler, "but I must leave you a moment. Those
are the vans from the public auction rooms; they have come to take away
my furniture from upstairs."

"What! you are going to sell your furniture too?" asked Madame Fromont.

"Certainly--to the last piece. I am simply giving it back to the firm.
It belongs to it."

"But that is impossible," said Georges. "I can not allow that."

Risler turned upon him indignantly.

"What's that? What is it that you can't allow?"

Claire checked him with an imploring gesture.

"True--true!" he muttered; and he hurried from the room to escape the
sudden temptation to give vent to all that was in his heart.

The second floor was deserted. The servants, who had been paid and
dismissed in the morning, had abandoned the apartments to the disorder of
the day following a ball; and they wore the aspect peculiar to places
where a drama has been enacted, and which are left in suspense, as it
were, between the events that have happened and those that are still to
happen. The open doors, the rugs lying in heaps in the corners, the
salvers laden with glasses, the preparations for the supper, the table
still set and untouched, the dust from the dancing on all the furniture,
its odor mingled with the fumes of punch, of withered flowers, of rice-
powder--all these details attracted Risler's notice as he entered.