‘My young brother killed the farmer that he worked for, the farmer’s wife, four children, and a farm-hand—all for the sake of the gold that was in the house. Alone he did it, with a hatchet—and he but a child of fifteen! Such a good lad, and regular with his Mass. It was merely the gold that maddened him, and yet they imprisoned him—_le pauvre!_’ At last Quality had heard the thrill of emotion in her voice. Looking up, he detected a bead of moisture in her eyes. The sight of her sorrow only added to the horror. On top of her calm recital of the crime, such sympathy for the juvenile monster was nauseating. ‘Your young brother must be a unique specimen,’ he said stiffly, speaking with an effort. ‘Not at all. Like all the rest of us. Like you, perhaps. Certainly, like me!’ A pleasant family history. To steady his nerves, Quality fingered his papers feverishly, repeating the while his magic formula: ‘To-morrow, I go home.’ Even as his lips silently framed the words, he started back, blinking his eyes, and momentarily stunned and deafened. For it seemed to him that a lighted express had shot, shrieking, through the room, like a rocket—thundering past him in a long golden streak. It was only a fresh manifestation of infamous buffoonery on the part of his nerves, yet it left Quality utterly shaken. He felt suddenly stranded and abandoned. All his vague fears and doubts of the past days sharpened into a definite pang of fear. _Was_ he, in actual fact, going home to-morrow? Or was he called upon to undergo the supreme anguish of cheated hope? To see his prison-bars opening—only to slam again in his face? As, still unstrung from shock, he looked round the room, he was a prey of minor optical delusions. Madame seemed to have swollen in bulk—the apartment to have grown distinctly smaller. He hated it with the savage hatred of a convict for his concrete cell. Inaction became unendurable, and he pushed back his chair. ‘I’m going out, madame.’ ‘No, m’sieur. No, _no_!’ ‘Why not?’ Suspicion stabbed him anew at madame’s vehement outcry. Yet her next words were reassuring by reason of their sound common sense. ‘Because, m’sieur, it is too late. See, it wants but a little to midnight. It might arouse suspicion in this place, where every brick has an eye. To-morrow, you return to your own country. How imprudent to risk your liberty thus, at the eleventh hour!’ His head approved the wisdom of the woman’s words. Once again, he saw her as she was—callous, mercenary, possibly—but, for the rest, an ordinary hard-working housewife of her class. Again he sat down, watching the flashing points of her needles, until his mind gave a sudden slip—and he found himself thinking with drowsy amusement of the Sheep in ‘Alice through the Looking-glass.’ He roused himself with a violent start—to find that madame had laid down her wool, and was watching him intently. The reflection from the lamp fell on her eyes, lighting therein twin balls of orange flame.