There was the sound of loud knocking on the street door. The violent double-beat of Quality’s heart seemed almost its echo. He started upright, every frayed nerve at utmost stretch; his eyes searching madame’s face as though he would read therein the Riddle of the Sphinx. There was a rapid, breathless exchange of question and answer. ‘There is some one at the door, madame.’ ‘I hear.’ ‘Who can it be?’ ‘Who knows? Visitors, perhaps.’ ‘At this hour! Why do you not open to them?’ ‘Why? Marie will doubtless hear.’ In the pause that followed, the knocking again sounded, louder and more peremptory, as though the door were battered by the impact of a mailed fist. Still mute to its summons, madame sat motionless, her needles flying with incredible rapidity. Then, higher up in the building, a door opened. Hurried shuffling footsteps descended the stair and pattered along the passage. ‘_C’est_ Marie.’ As she spoke, Madame raised her face, and, for the first time, Quality saw her eyes. Swiftly he averted his own, shrinking back before that stare of unholy guilt. She had betrayed him. For a fractional measure of time, he was rent by the throes of an elemental passion to grip the woman’s throat and wring out her life in bubbling breaths. But the wholly foreign impulse came and passed almost simultaneously at the grating scream of a withdrawn bolt. The sound of a man’s voice, sharp and peremptory, drowned the woman’s quavering tones in a rapid colloquy. Then there was silence, followed by the slam of a door. Quality’s whole frame shook in a tempestuous ague of suspense. Had they gone again? Was the blow to be averted at the eleventh hour? Were his hopes yet to find consummation? Even as he asked the question, the answer came. There was the sound of heavy footsteps along the passage. Once more, Quality’s hunted glance flickered around the room, with the sharpened sense of the trapped quarry, seeking desperately for some channel of escape. His eyes fell upon the papers lying on the table before him. He began to read them with dull interest. _Who_ was this Hubert Quality whose harmlessness and integrity were vouched for in black and white! What of him? Bereft of all sense of identity—calmly expectant—he watched the door burst open. It seemed the final performance of an oft-rehearsed drama. Inside—they were actually inside at last; these oft-dreamed-of figures of his fears—stern-faced men, wearing the grey Prussian uniform. Before him was the officer, seemingly magnified to unhuman stature, in long, belted coat and spiked helmet. His eyes, blue and polar, raked the room. His voice, sharp and metallic, gave the word of command. He was no man, but merely a vehicle of inexorable justice—a machine that has found its range. Slowly, slowly, Quality arose to his feet. He stretched out his hands. Arose—only to sink back in his seat. For, at the sound of a woman’s laugh, he realised that he was but the spectator in another’s drama.