“‘Madame!’ I cried.  ’I fear—­I doubt that it is safe to leave him for an hour to-night.’”

“She turned to me with a faint movement of surprise.  The moon showed her to me clearly.  Before the deliberate strength of her eyes, my gaze faltered.”

“‘But I assure you,’ she answered; ‘nothing can be safer.’”

“I made one more effort.  ‘But if I might see him for an instant,’ I pleaded.”

“She smiled and shook her head.  I might have been an importunate child.  ‘I promised him an hour,’ she said.  Her voice was indulgent, friendly, commonplace; it made me powerless.  I had it on my lips to cry out, ’He is in there alone, working himself up to the point of suicide!’ But I could not utter it.  I could no more say it than I could have smitten her in the face.  She was impregnable behind; that barrier of manners which she upheld so skillfully.  She continued to look at me for some seconds and to smile—­so gently, so mildly.  I think I groaned.”

“She began to talk again of the clouds, but I could not follow what she said.  That was my hour of impotence.  Madame, I have seen battles and slaughter and found no meaning in them.  But that isolated tragedy boxed up in the little house between the squalid town and the lugubrious desert—­it sucked the strength from my bones.  She continued to speak; the cultivated sweetness of her voice came and went in my ears like a maddening distraction from some grave matter in hand.  I think I was on the point of breaking in, violently, hysterically, when I cast a look at the lighted window again.  I cried out to her.”

“‘Look!  Look!’ I cried.”

“She did not turn.  ‘I have seen the sea like that at Naples,’ she was saying, gazing out to the desert, with her back to the house.  ’With the moon shining over Capri——­’”

“‘For the love of God!’ I said, and made one step toward the house.  But it was too late.  The shadowed hand—­and what it held—­rose; the shadowed head bent to meet it.”

“Even at the sound of the shot she did not turn.  ‘What was that?’ she said tranquilly.”

“For the moment I could not speak.  I had to gulp and breathe to recover myself.”

“‘Let us go and see,’ I said then.  ’The hour is past, and the letter of importance is finished.’”

“She nodded.  ‘By all means,’ she agreed carelessly, and I followed her into the house.”

“Once again I will spare Madame la Comtesse the details.  Bertin had evaded arrest.  At the end of all his laborings and groanings, the instant of resolution had come to him and he had made use of it.  On the table were paper and writing-things; one note was finished.”

“‘It is not for me,’ said Madame Bertin, as she leaned upon the table and read it.  I was laying a sheet upon the body; when I rose she handed it to me.  It bore neither name nor address; the poor futile life had blundered out without even this thing completed.  It was short, and to some woman.  ‘Tres-chere amie,’ it said; ’once I made a mistake.  I have paid for it.  You laughed at me once; You would not laugh now.  If you could see——­’”