"I don't think he is mad: he is revenging himself." "Impossible. He was my father's friend. All his life long he worked to bring us together: surely he would not kill us deliberately?" "I don't know, Patrice, I don't understand. . . ." They discussed it no further. It was of no importance whether their death was caused by this one or that one. It was death itself that they had to fight, without troubling who had set it loose against them. And what could they do to ward it off? "You agree, do you not?" asked Coralie, in a low voice. He made no answer. "I shall not go," she went on, "but I want you to be of one mind with me. I entreat you. It tortures me to think that you are suffering more than I do. You must let me bear my share. Tell me that you agree." "Yes," he said, "I agree." "My own Patrice! Now give me your two hands, look right into my eyes and smile." Mad with love and longing they plunged themselves for an instant into a sort of ecstasy. Then she asked: "What is it, Patrice? You seem distraught again." He gave a hoarse cry: "Look! . . . Look . . ." This time he was certain of what he had seen. The ladder was going up. The ten minutes were over. He rushed forward and caught hold of one of the rungs. The ladder no longer moved. He did not know exactly what he intended to do. The ladder afforded Coralie's only chance of safety. Could he abandon that hope and resign himself to the inevitable? One or two minutes passed. The ladder must have been hooked fast again, for Patrice felt a firm resistance up above. Coralie was entreating him: "Patrice," she asked, "Patrice, what are you hoping for?" He looked around and above him, as though seeking an idea, and he seemed also to look inside himself, as though he were seeking that idea amid all the memories which he had accumulated at the moment when his father also held the ladder, in a last effort of will. And suddenly, throwing up his leg, he placed his left foot on the fifth rung of the ladder and began to raise himself by the uprights. It was an absurd attempt to scale the ladder, to reach the skylight, to lay hold of the enemy and thus save himself and Coralie. If his father had failed before him, how could he hope to succeed? It was all over in less than three seconds. The ladder was at once unfastened from the hook that kept it hanging from the skylight; and Patrice and the ladder came to the ground together. At the same time a strident laugh rang out above, followed the next moment by the sound of the skylight closing.