Bregeac was listening to these monstrous accusations with a growing fear. It all seemed to him so inevitably true; it explained so exactly his own intuitions and agreed so closely with the half confidences Aurelie had just made to him with regard to her unknown savior. He did not even try to protest. At intervals he looked at her, always to find her sitting, motionless and dumb, in her rigid attitude. Marescal’s words did not appear to penetrate to her understanding, one would have said that she was listening to noises outside rather than to his words. Was it that she still hoped for an impossible intervention? “And then?” said Bregeac impatiently, as Marescal paused. “Then,” replied the Commissary, “thanks to him, she succeeded once more in escaping. But to-day I swear to you I can laugh at all that, since—to-day I have my revenge.” He paused to gloat over Aurelie, who seemed wholly unaware of his existence. “And what a revenge, Bregeac!” he went on. “Do you remember that six months ago you dismissed me as if I had been a valet—one might almost say you kicked me out? And now I hold her—this child—in the hollow of my hand; and all is over.” He turned his hand as if he were turning a key in a lock, and that so exact gesture showed so clearly and definitely his terrible resolution with regard to Aurelie that Bregeac exclaimed: “No, no. It isn’t true, Marescal! It can’t be true! You are not going to hand this child over to the police.” “Down there at Sainte-Marie I offered her peace,” said Marescal in harsh accents. “She repulsed me. All the worse for her! To-day is too late!” Bregeac approached him with his hands stretched out in a gesture of supplication and began an incoherent prayer. He cut it short. “It’s useless!” he cried. “All the worse for her! All the worse for you! She wouldn’t have me—she shall have nobody. And it’s mere justice. To pay her debt for the crime she has committed is to pay me for the harm she has done me. She must be punished; and I avenge myself in punishing her. All the worse for her!” He emphasized his phrases by stamping his foot or banging on the table. Then giving way to the natural grossness of his nature he turned on Aurelie and cried: “Look at her, Bregeac! Is she thinking for a moment of asking my forgiveness? If you bow your head, does she show any humiliation? And do you know the reason of this dumbness, of this sustained and intractable hardness? It’s because she still hopes, Bregeac. Yes, she hopes; I’m certain of it. She hopes that the man who has saved her three times from my claws, will save her a fourth.” Aurelie never stirred. He snatched up the receiver of the telephone and rang up the Prefecture of Police. “Hullo! Is that the Prefecture? Put me on to Monsieur Phillipe—it’s M. Marescal speaking.” He turned to the young girl and held the second receiver to her ear. Aurelie did not stir. Some one answered at the other end of the line: “Is that you, Marescal?”