"But Maria was speaking. 'Hush,' she whispered; 'do not tell. We can hide. Martinez will help us. To-morrow we'll bury her. It's the cholera; the health men will believe you; nobody will look close.' "Together they went back to the spot. Kneeling low, he gathered the little girl up in his arms. Something fell with a steely clang to the floor. He picked it up; it was a pair of scissors. Something eddied down slowly from her other hand; it was a lock of his own hair. He stood there, with the limp little body in his arms, stupid with the sudden vision of the trap set for him, the trap of retributive Fate, its appalling simplicity of means, its atrocity of result. But he must act. Hurriedly seizing his old, moth-eaten, army overcoat, he began to button it upon himself. Maria was talking again. "'Hush,' she said; 'do not tell. We can hide. Martinez will help us. We'll bury her to-morrow. It's the cholera. The health men will believe you; and nobody will dare look close.' "He stopped, with his hand upon the last brass button, his head bent to one side, listening to the insidious murmur. And he knew that it was true, hellishly true. The great stricken city, hypnotised with its fear, was indifferent to everything else. The whole thing could be hidden, buried, annihilated. Then he saw himself again as he had been earlier in the night, standing in the moonlight of the balcony, peering into the room, into the depths of his degradation. 'No, no, enough, enough!' he snarled. And, seizing the little body with its possible spark of life, he rushed out into the street.