But it seemed inevitable that that night his intentions should always result in actions contrary to them. As soon as he had quitted the doctor, without abandoning his plan, he returned towards the station as hard as he could run with the new plan of getting astride the horse of one of the policemen and so making sure of catching the car. As he hurried from his compartment to the station he had observed the three horses of the policemen in a shed with one of the porters looking after them. He made his way to that shed, to see, by the light of a lantern which lit it, that the porter was asleep. Instead of slipping the bridle of one of the horses off the hook and leading it away, he set about cutting quietly and with every conceivable precaution the girths of the three horses and the straps of their bridles. So when the police or Marescal did discover the disappearance of the girl with green eyes it would be impossible to pursue her. “I really don’t know what I’m doing,” Ralph said to himself as he regained the compartment in which Marescal had left him. “I’ve a perfect horror of this little devil; nothing would please me better than to hand her over to the police and keep my oath of vengeance. But all the efforts I do make help her to get away. Why?” He knew quite well the answer to this question. If he had been interested in the girl because she had eyes the color of jade, how should he not be protecting her now that he had held her clasped to him, half-fainting and with his lips on hers? Does one hand a girl whose lips one has kissed over to the police? Murderess she might be; but she had quivered to his lips; and he knew well that henceforth nothing in the world would prevent him from defending her against every one and everything. For him that burning kiss in the darkness was the central point of the drama and swept away all the resolutions which his instinct rather than his reason had brought him to make. That was why he felt obliged to resume contact with Marescal, in order to learn the result of his inquiries about her; and he was almost as eager to get into touch with him again about the business of the English girl and the wallet which she had begged him to carry away. Two hours later Marescal staggered into the compartment, harassed and exhausted, and dropped on to the opposite seat of the compartment in the detached railway car, in which the slumbering Ralph quietly waited for him. Ralph started up from his sleep, pulled down the lampshade, and seeing the distressed face, the parting all ruffled, the drooping mustache of the Commissary, cried out: “What on earth’s the matter, Monsieur Commissary? I hardly recognized you.” Marescal stammered: “Don’t you know? Didn’t you hear?” “I know nothing. I’ve heard nothing since you shut that door on me,” said Ralph. “Escaped!” groaned the Commissary. “Who?” “The murderer!” “So you caught one?” “Yes.” “Which of them? The man or the woman?” “The woman.”