“Did she look like that?” suddenly demanded Hawke, thrusting a photograph before the haggard eyes of the broken artist. He gasped, and tears gathered in his lashes. “Valerie, herself, and, as I knew her only before her fatal illness had marked her down. Did Alixe give you this?” He clutched at it with his trembling hands. “Go on,” harshly said Alan Hawke, “the hour is late!” The Pole buried his face in his thinned hands, and then brokenly resumed: “The old story--the only one you know. She was about my own age; Troubetskoi was nearly always away; perhaps he thought to trap all my traitorous circle through me, or else he was in the secret service of the hungry Russian eagle. Valerie roamed silently through the great halls of Jitomir, saddened and lonely, for their union was childless. My heart spoke to her own in my music; she knew the prayer of my soul, though my lips were silent. For I madly adored her. Then, then, I was a man! My life belonged to Poland, my soul to art, but my heart was a sealed temple of love, a temple where Valerie, the beloved, the secretly worshiped, sat alone on her throne. “One day a woman, radiant in youth, and reflecting Valerie’s own beauty, was brought to the chateau by Troubetskoi, who had journeyed on to Vienna. It was Alixe Delavigne, the woman whom I saw last with you. A month later Valerie called me to her side: ‘My poor Casimir,’ she said, as I knelt at her feet, ‘I am dying! The struggle will not be a long one. I know the secret of your boyish heart. Your eyes have spoken and your music has reached my heart. Your love is written in your songs without words. When you have forgotten me, there is Alixe; she is alone upon earth. Let me seal your heart to hers, and even in death I shall feel that I love you both.’ Then,” the artist sobbed, “I lost my head. I told her all in mad, burning words. She raised her eyes to mine, and softly said: ‘I shall see you no more unless Alixe is with us, for I love Pierre and he loves me. When I am gone, Alixe will be the only one who knows the secret of my life.’ “It was two months later--for I would not leave her side, even Pierre Troubetskoi could not see her passing away, for it was a mysterious malady--when a sudden alarm brought me to my senses. My secret society work was done, and yet I lingered there, at the very steps of the scaffold. Alixe Delavigne burst into my room at midnight. “‘Hasten!’ she cried. ‘Even now the Cossacks are surrounding the house!’ She let me out through the secret passage of the old Chateau. A cloak was thrown over me by the Intendant. He was a Pole--and one true to the old blood. Alixe pressed a purse upon me. An address in Paris was whispered. ‘I will write! Go! For Valerie’s sake, go!’