In the reaction of spirits, he stooped to pick up madame’s ball of worsted. ‘The last time I shall do this for you, madame!’ Even as he spoke, his morbid mind quarrelled with his sentence; it seemed as though its finality left a loophole for sinister interpretation. ‘_Bien!_’ ‘Shall you miss me, madame?’ ‘Yes.’ Her ‘_si_’ was emphatic. ‘As one misses all men. Less work, but, unfortunately, less money.’ The speech, typical of the frugal housekeeper of grasping spirit, was reassuring. He smiled once more as he looked at the clock. ‘You’re late to-night, madame! You should save your eye-sight—or, better still, your oil and fuel. Aren’t you going to bed at all?’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘For me, I have no stomach for bed, at all, at all. To sleep would be but to see again that which I have, this day, seen. What? Have you not heard?’ He shook his head. ‘Ah! What misfortune! To-day, at noon, they shot M. Lemoine!’ M. Lemoine—the prominent citizen and advocate! Quality could not credit the news. His mind conjured up a vivid picture of that portly form and plum-coloured face, as madame proceeded. ‘Yes, m’sieur, I saw it. It was horrible. Two soldiers ran him down the steps of the hotel—quick, quick! yet, at every step, one saw him shrink. It was as though a hole had been pierced in him, so that the _man_ came leaking through. At the top, there was the fine figure—so brave, so big; at the bottom, only a shrunken stranger, with eyes that ran, ran, and fingers that picked, and little bubbles around his lips, rising, rising. He—_himself_—was gone. There was no longer any M. Lemoine!’ Told in her native tongue, with pantomimic gesture to point her words, the recital was ghastly. Breathing heavily, Quality cleared his throat to ask a question. ‘What was the charge?’ Surely the woman must notice the treacherous quiver of his voice! Her answer seemed to be delayed for an eternity. ‘The charge, m’sieur?—He was a spy!’ ‘_Ah!_’ Quality sank down upon a bristly horsehair chair, the crocheted antimacassar slipping down behind his back. He looked around him with eyes of sick loathing. The clicking sound of madame’s needles maddened him; he had watched the incessant flash of steel for so many long-drawn-out evenings of strain. The flawed mirror, set above the marble console table, reflected the room, duplicating the gilt clock on the mantelshelf and the pallid waxen fruit, cherished under crystal shades. Presently, however, the hateful vision blurred and faded away, and the home-sick man saw, in its stead, the picture that was engraved upon his mind. Somewhere, far away from this place of thunder, bloodshed, and cold fears—geographical facts non-existent—was an isle that rocked gently, like an ark of safety, on the grey-green seas. And tucked away, within its very heart, approached only by grass-grown ruts, was a long, grey house. Sentinelled by age-old oaks, there brooded over it the very spirit of security and peace.