The fatal, fatal mistake of the woman who gives herself up to a man before marriage, the fatal mistake is not so much perhaps in yielding to nature as in entertaining the idea that she is loved. To Hellier the idea of love was inseparable from the idea of marriage. He could not think of the woman he loved in any other position than exactly on the same pedestal as himself. His wife before all the world, on a par with his mother and his sisters, respected by them and received as one of themselves. And she was the daughter of an assassin. A cold-blooded murderer, whose crime had shocked Europe. It was not her fault. Leprosy is not the leper’s fault; is it any the less a barrier, shutting happiness out for ever from the afflicted one? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXXIV FREYBERGER remained at his post all that night. It was the bitterest experience he had ever known. Without food, without fire, without light, half worn out from his struggle with Hellier and depressed by the result, the chance of the capture of Klein reduced to the barest possible, he still remained on guard, watchful and ready to spring. With the full light of day he left the place, bearing with him the only scrap of evidence that could be any use, that is to say, the small valise containing the suit of clothes and the jewel cases and the knife sheath. He had some food at an early morning coffee-stall in the High Street, and then he proceeded on his way to the Yard. The great Kalihari Desert is not a more desolate place than London in the early morning. There are no cabs, there are no omnibuses; there are no shops, no people. You hear that which is the voice of a city’s desolation, the echo of your own footsteps. The High Street of Kensington was empty from end to end, experiencing the hiatus in traffic which comes between the passing of the last market gardener’s cart and the passage of the first cab. Freyberger, with the valise in his hand, had made up his mind to walk to his destination, when an early hansom turned out of one of the side streets, and, getting in, he told the driver to take him to the Yard. Here he delivered up the valise and the jewel cases, directed that a man should be sent to St Ann’s Road to take charge of the house and make inquiries, also that Sir Anthony Gyde’s tailor should be discovered and the clothes submitted to him. Then he returned to his lodgings, south of the water, to obtain a few hours’ sleep. “Well, Freyberger,” said the chief to the detective, when at four o’clock that afternoon they found themselves together, “what have you to report?” Freyberger reported everything that we know as having taken place in St Ann’s Road. Had you been listening to his report, you would have admitted that if he were jealous he was also honest, for he minimized nothing, nor did he magnify anything or attempt to cast the blame for his failure on Hellier.