Perhaps if the guest could have known how his hostess spent the night he might have slept less well; perhaps, even, if, when he had looked back from the head of the stairs, he had seen how she stood rigid against the wall, in the lake of shadow by the press, her hands clenched at her sides, like one who has encountered some terrible vision, he might have descended to prosecute the inquiry he had abandoned. Perhaps he might have felt compassion at the tormented, desperate face she wore as the hours crept on towards morning, and every one brought conviction nearer to her, yet no guidance. "It is he! it must be he!" she said aloud, not once but many times. "He was at Coblentz then--he acknowledged it. Oh, was it god or devil showed me his name? . . . André, André, my darling, tell me what I am to do!" Rent with sobs, she would cease her agonised pacing to and fro, and throw herself down by the table, her head on her outstretched arms. . . . But of these phenomena La Vireville was not a witness. And soon the dawn was stealing in, comfortless. Mme. Rozel extinguished the lamp, and sat, her hands locked tight together. As the daylight grew, so did the light in her eyes--a steady beacon. Her mouth hardened itself into an inflexible line, and at last, rising as one whose mind is irrevocably set, she began to go cautiously up the stairs to La Vireville's room. So light was her tread that the steps did not creak. The door yielded to her touch. She went in, noiseless as a ghost, her face like a ghost's save for the flame in her eyes. Under the tiny window, a little turned on his side, and with one arm crooked beneath his head, her guest lay in a profound sleep. She stood a minute by the door, then crept nearer and looked down at him long and steadily. Yes, it must be he! Here were the same features, as they had been painted to her; the same hair and brows, the same cleft in the chin. The mounting tide of hatred began to lift her off her feet. . . . And even while she studied his sleeping face she saw, hanging from the back of the chair by the bedside, a hunting-knife--his own. She was not conscious of putting out her hand for it, still less of drawing it from its sheath, yet the moment after the bright blade was somehow in her grip. How absolutely he lay at her mercy!--and so still that his breathing scarcely lifted his half-open shirt. Staring down at the strong, bare throat she suddenly turned giddy. . . . How far--or how little distance--would that wave of feeling have carried her? Next instant two eyes, quite calm and very alert, were looking up into hers, and the hand that had been under the sleeper's head held her wrist in a clutch like fate. "Madame, private theatricals are out of fashion," said La Vireville in a lazy voice. A twist of his powerful fingers, and the hunting-knife dropped from her grasp to the coverlet, where his other hand secured it. "My own knife too! May I ask why you were rehearsing this dramatic scene?"