His voice ended in the faintest whisper. The table crashed over, and the cards flew wide-spread on the floor. Before we could recover, madame was in the antechamber, screaming for Jules. One would have said that, from her face, the old lady had witnessed the resurrection described by Mr. Horace, the rush of the spirits with their burdens of remorse, the one to the feet of the other; and she must have seen herself and her husband, with a unanimity of purpose never apparent in their short married life, rising from their common tomb and hastening to that other tomb at the end of the alley, and falling at the feet of the one to whom in life he had been recreant in love, she in friendship. Of course Jules answered through the wrong door, rushing in with his gas-stick, and turning off the gas. In a moment we were involved in darkness and dispute. "But what does he mean? What does the idiot mean? He--" It was impossible for her to find a word to do justice to him and to her exasperation at the same time. "Pardon, madame; it is not I. It is the cathedral bell; it is ringing nine o'clock." "But--" "Madame can hear it herself. Listen!" We could not see it, but we were conscious of the benign, toothless smile spreading over his face as the bell-tones fell in the room. "But it is not the gas. I--" "Pardon, madame; but it is the gas. Madame said, 'Jules, put out the gas every night when the bell rings.' Madame told me that only last night. The bell rings: I put out the gas." "Will you be silent? Will you listen?" "If madame wishes; just as madame says." But the old lady had turned to Mr. Horace. "Horace, you have seen--you know--" and it was a question now of overcoming emotion. "I--I--I--a carriage, my friend, a carriage." "Madame--" Jules interrupted his smile to interrupt her. She was walking around the room, picking up a shawl here, a lace there; for she was always prepared against draughts. "Madame--" continued Jules, pursuing her. "A carriage." "If madame would only listen, I was going to say--but madame is too quick in her disposition--the carriage has been waiting since a long hour ago. Mr. Horace said to have it there in a half hour." It was then she saw for the first time that it had all been prepared by Mr. Horace. The rest was easy enough: getting into the carriage, and finding the place of which Mr. Horace had heard, as he said, only that afternoon. In it, on her bed of illness, poverty, and suffering, lay the patient, wasted form of the beautiful fair one whom men had called in her youth Myosotis. But she did not call her Myosotis. "_Mon Amour!_" The old pet name, although it had to be fetched across more than half a century of disuse, flashed like lightning from madame's heart into the dim chamber. "_Ma Divine!_" came in counter-flash from the curtained bed.