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She danced with intoxication, with passion, made drunk by pleasure, forgetting all, in the triumph of her b
eauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness composed of all this homage, of all this admiration, of all these awakened desires, and of that sense of complete victory which is so sweet to woman’s heart.

She went away about four o’clock in the morning. Her husband had been sleeping since midnight, in a little deserted ante-room, with three other gentlemen whose wives were having a very good time.

He threw over her shoulders the wraps which he had brought, modest wraps of common life, whose poverty contrasted with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this and wanted to escape so as not to be remarked by the other women, who were enveloping themselves in costly furs.

Loisel held her back.

“Wait a bit. You will catch cold outside. I will go and call a cab. ”

But she did not listen to him, and rapidly descended the stairs. When they were in the street they did not find a carriage; and they began to look for one, shouting after the cabmen whom they saw passing by at a distance.

They went down towards the Seine, in despair, shivering with cold. At last they found on the quay one of those ancient noctambulant coupés which, exactly as if they were ashamed to show their misery during the day, are never seen round Paris until after nightfall.

It took them to their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and once more, sadly, they climbed up homeward. All was ended for her. And as to him, he reflected that he must be at the Ministry at ten o’clock.

She removed the wraps, which covered her shoulders, before the glass, so as once more to see herself in all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry. She had no longer the necklace around her neck!

Her husband, already half-undressed, demanded:

“What is the matter with you?”

She turned madly towards him:

“I have—I have—I’ve lost Mme. Forestier’s necklace. ”

He stood up, distracted.

“What!—how?—Impossible!”

And they looked in the folds of her dress, in the folds of her cloak, in her pockets, everywhere. They did not find it.

He asked:

“You’re sure you had it on when you left the ball?”

“Yes, I felt it in the vestibule of the palace. ”

“But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it fall. It must be in the cab. ”

“Yes. Probably. Did you take his number?”

“No. And you, didn’t you notice it?”

“No. ”

They looked, thunderstruck, at one another. At last Loisel put on his clothes.

“I shall go back on foot,” said he, “over the whole route which we have taken, to see if I can’t find it. ”

And he went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, without fire, without a thought.

Her husband came back about seven o’clock. He had found nothing.

He went to Police Headquarters, to the newspaper offices, to offer a reward; he went to the cab companies—everywhere, in fact, whither he was urged by the least suspicion of hope.

She waited all day, in the same condition of mad fear before this terrible calamity.

Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale face; he had discovered nothing.

“You must write to your friend,” said he, “that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you are having it mended. That will give us time to turn round. ”

She wrote at his dictation.

At the end of a week they had lost all hope.

And Loisel, who had aged five years, declared: