“My husband!” Madame cried, starting forward, then she sank back, white-lipped and trembling. “Yes,” said Rose, “I went to see him. I found him in the Baedeker. He was in the sixth hotel I called at.” “But why,” began Madame Gérard, “why did you seek him--Madame, what did you say to him? Forgive me, I do not understand?” “I thought perhaps I had better see him first,” Rose explained. “I saw him in the hall. I think he was in a kind of rage--he said he had seen you last night at a theater with Léon, and I said, yes--that I never went to theaters in Italy because I didn’t understand the language, and then he asked me if I had been with you all the time.” Madame Gérard held her breath. Her eyes seemed like a prayer. Rose turned to Léon. “I’m afraid I didn’t tell him the truth,” she said hesitatingly. “I hope it wasn’t very dreadful--I said, yes, of course I had.” “You lied to him!” gasped Léon. “Then--then--” for the first time he looked at Madame Gérard. She covered her face with her hands. Rose looked a little perturbed. “I didn’t know,” she said, “what else there was to be done. Of course I know it was very wrong. I never have been untruthful before. I--I don’t like telling lies, but I thought--I’d better. So I said we were all together. I was a little afraid he mightn’t believe me or that he might ask me where we were, but he didn’t. He quite believed me. He only asked me what I wanted to see him for.” “_Par exemple_,” muttered Léon; “he asked you that?” Rose poured herself out a second cup of tea. “I said,” she went on, “I came because I thought you might be sorry for leaving your wife all alone--just because she tried to turn over your music for you--and that I thought perhaps you might be wanting to tell her so--and not know where she was.” Madame’s eyes fell from her face. “But yes--” she whispered, “and what did he say, Raoul, when you asked him that?” There was a new look in her eyes now, and a little color in her pale cheeks. “He said he _was_ sorry,” said Rose, gently. “He said he never would have behaved like that, and never meant to--it was only the music, he said, he often lost his head over music, and that that afternoon he had felt how great a success his marriage was--so that it was doubly unfortunate. He said he wanted to come back to you very much.” There was a moment’s pause. Madame Gérard’s voice was quite different when she spoke now, there was hope in it. “And what answer did you give him, Madame?” she said. “I think I can see by your eyes that you gave him an answer.” Rose nodded. “I told him--I had a feeling that you would forgive him--and that I would ask you, if you did, to send him a line to-night--saying if you would see him, and where, of course! You see I didn’t know where you were at the time--but I found you quite easily, because I had remembered something that Léon had said to me about this special view.”