conscious charm of those who must be always on the watch to conceal their secret torment, the stabbing agony of the wound within them? In the darkness of that jolting carriage, on that highway through the dark pine-forest, sat a young woman, now without her mask, whose face, as she passed her hand wearily across her forehead, was the face of one burning at the stake. What would be the first words of Bernard whose perjury had saved her? He would probably not ask any questions that evening,--but to-morrow? Thérèse shut her eyes, opened them again, and, like horses when they drop into a walk uphill, tried to realise the terrible ascent that lay before her. Well, well, she would not look ahead; it would perhaps be easier than she thought; she would not look ahead at all,--just sleep.... But she is no longer in the carriage ... who is that behind the green-baize table? ... the examining Judge ... what, again? But surely he knows that it is all over. No, he shakes his head: the case cannot be dropped, a new fact has come to light. A new fact? Thérèse turns away so that her enemy shall not see her confusion. “Cast your mind back, Madame: In the inner pocket of that old cloak,--the one you used only in October for pigeon-shooting, was there nothing forgotten or concealed?” She cannot speak, the words stick in her throat. Without taking his eyes off his victim, the Judge lays upon the table a tiny packet sealed with red wax. Thérèse knows by heart the formula written on the label, which he proceeds to read out with terrible distinctness. Chloroform: 10 grammes. Aconitine: 2 grammes. Digitaline: 20 centigrammes. And the Judge bursts out laughing.... The brake rasped against the wheel, and Thérèse awoke. Her heaving lungs were full of mist,--they must be driving down to the “White Brook.” So, in her girlhood, she used to dream that, by some mistake, she had had to take her junior certificate examination over again; and when she awoke this evening she felt as relieved as she used to do in those far-off days: just a touch of anxiety because the decision was not yet official, though she realised, of course, that her lawyer had to be notified first. * * * * * She was free: what more could she want? It would be perfectly simple to put herself right with Bernard. She would make a clean breast of the whole thing, omitting nothing. She would have to tell the whole story, without concealment, and tell it that very evening. This resolution made her feel positively cheerful. Before she got to Argelouse, she would have time to ‘prepare her confession,’ as her pious little friend Anne de la Trave used to say every Saturday of their happy holidays together. Indeed, her innocent little sister Anne played no mean part in this tragedy. These simple creatures do not know in what strange happenings they are involved by day and night, and what poisoned growths spring up under their childish footsteps.