"This is terrible, this is terrible," said Patrice. "To-day's date! Who can have written that? It has only just been written. Oh, it's terrible! . . . Come, come, after all, we can't . . ." He rushed to one of the windows, tore back the curtain that veiled it and pulled upon the casement. A cry escaped him. The window was walled up, walled up with building-stones that filled the space between the glass and the shutters. He ran to the other window and found the same obstacle. There were two doors, leading probably to the bedroom on the right and to a room next to the kitchen on the left. He opened them quickly. Both doors were walled up. He ran in every direction, during the first moment of terror, and then hurled himself against the first of the three doors and tried to break it down. It did not move. It might have been an immovable block. Then, once again, they looked at each other with eyes of fear; and the same terrible thought came over them both. The thing that had happened before was being repeated! The tragedy was being played a second time. After the mother and the father, it was the turn of the daughter and the son. Like the lovers of yesteryear, those of to-day were prisoners. The enemy held them in his powerful grip; and they would doubtless soon know how their parents had died by seeing how they themselves would die. . . . 14 April, 1895. . . . 14 April, 1915. . . . CHAPTER XII IN THE ABYSS "No, no, no!" cried Patrice. "I won't stand this!" He flung himself against the windows and doors, took up an iron dog from the fender and banged it against the wooden doors and the stone walls. Barren efforts! They were the same which his father had made before him; and they could only result in the same mockery of impotent scratches on the wood and the stone. "Oh, Coralie, Coralie!" he cried in his despair. "It's I who have brought you to this! What an abyss I've dragged you into! It was madness to try to fight this out by myself! I ought to have called in those who understand, who are accustomed to it! . . . No, I was going to be so clever! . . . Forgive me, Coralie." She had sunk into a chair. He, almost on his knees beside her, threw his arms around her, imploring her pardon. She smiled, to calm him: "Come, dear," she said, gently, "don't lose courage. Perhaps we are mistaken. . . . After all, there's nothing to show that it is not all an accident." "The date!" he said. "The date of this year, of this day, written in another hand! It was your mother and my father who wrote the first . . . but this one, Coralie, this one proves premeditation, and an implacable determination to do away with us." She shuddered. Still she persisted in trying to comfort him: "It may be. But yet it is not so bad as all that. We have enemies, but we have friends also. They will look for us."