“Secondly, Josine and Leonard, who lured her away from Lillebonne and shut her up, go to see her every day and try to extract some definite information from her. Yesterday the questioning was doubtless rather violent. Mother Rousselin yells; the police arrive. A desperate flight. They get away. Somewhere on their route they deposit their captive in another prison, already prepared for her; and once more they are safe. All these emotions brought about Josine’s attack of nerves.” He studied an ordnance map of the route from Maulevrier Forest to the _Nonchalante_. The direct route was thirty kilometers; somewhere off that route, at some distance to the left or to the right Madam Rousselin was imprisoned. “Come,” he said to himself, “the terrain of the conflict is marked out. It’s about time that I made my entry on to the stage.” Next day he got to work, wandering along the Normandy roads, questioning the dwellers on them and trying to discover the points of the passage and the halting-places of “an old barouche drawn by two little horses.” Logically and inevitably his quest must come to a successful end. * * * * * During those days the love of Ralph and Josephine Balsamo was at its keenest and most passionate. The young woman, knowing that the police were on her track, and remembering what she had heard at the Vasseur Inn, at Doudeville, did not dare to leave the _Nonchalante_ and traverse the Caux country. So after every expedition Ralph found her on the barge, and they threw themselves into one another’s arms with an exasperated desire to enjoy to the full the delights which, they foresaw, must soon come to an end. Only such dolorous delights as two lovers on the verge of separation can have. Suspect delights that doubt poisoned. Either of them divined the secret designs of the other, and even as their lips met either knew that the other, for all their love, was acting as if they were at daggers drawn. “I love you! I love you!” Ralph reiterated desperately while his inmost thought was how to find means of snatching Bridget’s mother from the talons of his mistress. Sometimes they gripped one another with the violence of two creatures veritably battling with one another. There was a brutality in their caresses, a threat in their eyes, hate in their hearts, and despair in their tenderness. One would have said that they were watching one another to discover the weak point at which to strike with the deadliest effect. One night Ralph awoke with a sensation of extreme discomfort to find Josephine at his bedside, with a lamp in her hand, looking down on him. He shivered. Not that her charming face wore other than its usual smiling expression. But why did that smile seem to him so wicked and so cruel? “What’s the matter? What do you want?” he said sharply. “Nothing--nothing,” she said in careless accents, and she left him. But she came back presently to show him a photograph.