He gasped, as if he had been struck over the heart. There was something here so intimate to the story of a pitifully misdirected life. The shoes seemed to have taken the shape of the feet that had pursued him so far and at last, it seemed, so despairingly. The linen--he bent and pressed his cheek to it. It was fragrant--as was everything personal to Nicette--but it was cold. How long had she been gone? He had his wish, then. She had taken the initiative. He was free to nurse his memories unvexed of a regard so misplaced. He could raise his head and stand acquitted before his ancient ideals. He drooped his head, rather. He was weak and overwrought. The strain upon him during the last three days had been so extreme that perhaps his moral vision was impaired. A sound coming from the adjoining room startled him. Was it she returned? He winked down fiercely something that had gathered unaccountably in his eyes, cleared his throat, and strode forth. The landlord, Theophilus--that was all. But the little man’s face was smock-white, his curls hung limp, his eye-places were grey with fear. He had closed the door behind him. “Monsieur!” he whispered. “My God, where hast thou been?” “What is the matter?” “Monsieur’s young friend! Has he not heard of her?” “Well; she is gone, I suppose?” “Ay--_mon Dieu Jésus_!--to the guillotine.” Ned fell back. There seemed to rise a roaring in his ears. “Hush!” he said--“listen! They are shrieking for her. I must go!” His face was ghastly. But the thundering voice sank and ceased, and he knew that he had been dreaming. “What was that you said, my Théophile?” he asked, with a little insane chuckle over his own fancifulness. “It was yesterday morning, monsieur. You had gone out the previous night, and had not returned. I heard her leave the house after breakfast. I looked forth. Pitiful Mother! she was clad in the rags of her arrival. Her feet were bare. They budded from the snow, the very frosted flowers of a too-trustful spring. She stood a moment, then went off. _Hélas_! it was not for me to speak, but----” “Well?” said Ned, in a gripping voice of iron. He was himself again, but with death at his heart. “I can speak only from the evidence. In the afternoon I looked into the Salle de la Liberté, as I sometimes will, to hear the cases that were on. There was a little excitement about a girl who had been seized that morning in one of the passages of the Palais de Justice with a long knife in her hand. She had made no secret of the fact that it was her intention to assassinate one or other of the judges as they came forth at mid-day. She was brought in for trial while I was there. I swear--my God, monsieur! I swear I had no shadowy thought of the truth. It was monsieur’s young friend. I shrank into an angle of the court, in agony lest she should see and endeavour to implicate me.” “Thou needst not have feared, I think--thou needst not have feared.”