“It would be better that you should know it. Listen. At Nice the securities which he was seeking at the Villa Faradoni did not belong to him. He had merely come to steal them. At Monte Carlo he demanded a hundred thousand francs for the return of some compromising letters. The fellow is just a crook and a thief, perhaps worse; that’s what he is.” Aurelie did not protest. She must have had some notion of the real facts, and this brutal enumeration of them did not surprise her. “You have saved me from him. I thank you,” she said gently. “Alas, you ought to have confided in me instead of flying from me,” he said. “What a lot of time we have lost!” She turned to go but paused to say: “Why should I confide in you? Who are you? I don’t know you. Marescal, who accuses you, does not even know your name. You saved me from every danger—for what reason? With what object?” He laughed gently and said: “With the object of tearing your secret from you, like the others: is that what you mean?” “I don’t mean anything,” she murmured despondently. “I know nothing, I understand nothing. For two or three weeks I have been dashing myself against walls of darkness on every side. Do not ask more trust from me than I can give. I distrust everything and everybody.” He took pity on her and let her go. As he went away himself, he thought: “She has not said a word about that terrible night. Miss Bakersfield was murdered; two men were murdered. And I saw her disguised and masked.” While waiting for her on the topmost terrace he had seen a little door in the wall of the terrace below it. That terrace also was empty. Keeping under cover, he went down to the little door and easily opened it. It gave him a much easier way of access to the topmost terrace. He descended to the pool, very thoughtful. For him also everything was mysterious and inexplicable. Round him, as round her, rose those same walls of darkness, through the tiniest cracks in which here and there filtered a dim light. In the presence of the girl herself, moreover—and it had been so since the beginning of the adventure—he never thought for a moment of the oath of vengeance that he had sworn above the body of Miss Bakersfield, or of anything else which could disfigure the gracious image of the girl with the green eyes. During the next two days he did not see her. Then she came three days in succession without a word of explanation of her return, but as if she was seeking a protection she could not do without.