La Vireville was indeed not without occupation of a sort as he lay there wakeful and the hours went by. He was enabled to devote almost unlimited time to an interesting problem--one now, unfortunately, impossible of exact solution. Would Mme. de Guéfontaine, this modern Jael, really have stabbed him yesterday morning if he had not forestalled her? On the whole, he was almost inclined to think that she would. But probably she would not have done it very well. . . . What irony, though, if she had--if he, Augustin, after all his hazards and escapes, had ended that way, slain in his sleep by a devoted adherent of the same cause, for a private offence that he had never committed, and which the real offender had since, perhaps, almost expiated! (By the way, he must remember to tell Mme. de Guéfontaine of that.) At any rate, he was heartily glad to know that she had not, after all, betrayed him. To the conception of her now gradually forming in his mind, such a course seemed so foreign as almost to be incredible. But he did believe that she might have used the knife. Speculations of this kind did not, of course, advance sleep, though they kept him a little from thinking of his injured foot, which was the real obstacle to slumber. As the moon-pools ebbed away and the place became full of a ghostly grey radiance that might or might not be the dawn--for La Vireville had small idea of the time--he changed his position on the settle, thinking it might ease his foot. Stealthily as he did it, he heard Mme. de Guéfontaine stir. He repeated his expedient of shutting his eyes and lying very still. But he knew in a moment that she had risen from her chair and was bending over him, so he reopened them. "M. le Chevalier, you cannot sleep, I know," she whispered. "Peu importe, Madame," he replied. "But what of you?" "If I could see you sleeping perhaps I could do the same," was her retort. "Let me renew the wet cloth round your foot; it is time it was done." La Vireville protested, but she paid no heed. Flitting about noiselessly in that pale gloom she procured water, and, kneeling by the settle, very intently unwound the heated wrappings, dipped them in the cool liquid, and replaced them. "Is that better?" she asked, coming like a ghost to his side. "Much better," he murmured. "Almost worth having it crushed for, in fact." Mme. de Guéfontaine looked down at him without speaking, but he was aware, almost painfully aware, of the distress and remorse surging in her heart. "I was sure that the Blues had got you--if they had not killed you," she said in a vibrating voice. "And all for me, for me who . . ." "As far as I can tell," interrupted La Vireville lightly, "they rode over me and never saw me. I assure you that I have the devil's own luck, Madame; it is mixed with a good deal of an inferior kind, but it has always held to this point, that I have so far succeeded in cheating l'Ankou, as we call him in Brittany."