on her and betrayed her to her husband, all this might not have
happened," continued the detective pitilessly, adding with a bitter
smile: "And it was not even a case of sinful love. Your mistress had
no such relations with this Winkler as you--I say this to excuse
you--seemed to believe."

Adele Bernauer sprang up. "I do not need this excuse," she cried,
trembling in excitement. "I do not need any excuse. What I have done
I did after due consideration and in the realisation that it was
absolutely necessary to do it. Never for one moment did I believe that
my mistress was untrue to her husband. Never for one moment could I
believe such an evil thing of her, for I knew her to be an angel of
goodness. A woman who is deceiving her husband is not as unhappy as this
poor lady has been for months. A woman does not write to a successful
lover with so much sorrow, with so many tears. I had long suspected
these meetings before I discovered them, but I knew that these meetings
had nothing whatever to do with love. Because I knew this, and only
because I knew it, did I tell my master about them. I wanted him to
protect his wife, to free her from the wretch who had obtained some
power over her, I knew not how."

"Ah! then that was it?" exclaimed Muller, and his eyes softened as he
looked at the sobbing woman who had sunk back into her chair. He laid
his hand on her cold fingers and continued gently: "Then you have really
done right, you have done only what was your duty. I pity you deeply
that you--"

"That I have brought suspicion upon my master by my own foolishness?"
she finished the sentence with a pitifully sad smile. "If I could have
controlled myself, could have kept calm, nobody would have had a thought
or a suspicion that he--my pet, my darling--that it was he who was
forced, through some terrible circumstance of which I do not know, to
free his wife, in this manner, from the wretch who persecuted her."

Mrs. Bernauer wrung her hands and gazed with despairing eyes at the man
who sat before her, himself deeply moved.

Again there was a long silence. Muller could not find a word to comfort
the weeping woman. There was no longer anger in his heart, nothing but
the deepest pity. He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the drops
that were dimming his own eyes.

"You know that I will have to go to Venice?" he asked.

Mrs. Bernauer sprang up. "Officially?" she gasped, pale to her lips.

He nodded. "Yes, officially of