Is he dreaming? Or is that a knock at his door? His door, which he always leaves unlocked at night, opens gently and a slender white figure comes in. He hears a faint call: “Lafcadio!... Are you there, Lafcadio?” And yet, through his half-waking slumber, Lafcadio recognises that voice. Can it be that he doubts the reality of so gracious an apparition? Or does he fear that a word, a movement, may put it to flight?... He keeps silent. Genevieve de Baraglioul, whose room was next-door to her father’s, had in spite of herself overheard the whole of the conversation between him and Lafcadio. An intolerable dread had driven her to his room and when her call remained unanswered, fully convinced that Lafcadio had killed himself, she rushed towards the bed and fell sobbing on her knees beside it. As she knelt there, Lafcadio raised himself and bent over her with his whole being drawn towards her, but not daring as yet to put his lips on the fair forehead he saw gleaming in the darkness. Then Genevieve de Baraglioul felt all her strength dissolve; throwing back her forehead, which Lafcadio’s breath was already caressing, and not knowing where to turn for help against him, save to himself alone: “Dear friend, have pity,” she cried. Lafcadio mastered himself at once; drawing back and at the same time pushing her away: “Rise, Mademoiselle de Baraglioul,” he said. “Leave me! I am not--I cannot be your friend.” Genevieve rose, but she did not move from the side of the bed where Lafcadio, whom she had thought dead, lay half reclining. She tenderly touched his burning forehead, as though to convince herself he was still alive. “Dear friend,” she said, “I overheard everything you said to my father this evening. Don’t you understand that that is why I am here?” Lafcadio half raised himself and looked at her. Her loosened hair fell about her; her whole face was in the shadow so that he could not see her eyes but he felt her look enfold him. As though unable to bear its sweetness, he hid his face in his hands. “Ah!” he groaned, “why did I meet you so late? What have I done that you should love me? Why do you speak to me so now when I am no longer free and no longer worthy to love you?” She protested sadly: “It is to you I have come, Lafcadio--to no one else. To you--a criminal. Lafcadio! How many times have I sighed your name since the first day when you appeared to me like a hero--indeed, you seemed a little over-daring ... I must tell you now--I made a secret vow to myself that I would be yours, from that very moment when I saw you risk your life so nobly. What has happened since then? Can you really have killed someone? What have you let yourself become?” And as Lafcadio shook his head without answering: “Did I not hear my father say that someone else had been arrested--a ruffian, who had just committed a murder?... Lafcadio! while there is still time, save yourself! This very night! Go! Go!” Then Lafcadio: