d overheard. I had cherished a
feeling of the utmost charity for her until that moment, but the
"accident" changed all that, for I had not a doubt in my mind that it
was by her order that somebody had made the attempt to assassinate me.

After a few hours' sleep I felt as well as ever, and before the time to
make my call upon the princess I paid a visit to Jean Moret. I had
neglected to say that the only letter he had sent away since his
imprisonment was one to his mother, from whom he had received a reply
addressed through one of my agents, and in explanation of his
reluctance to send more, he had said: "It is better that the world
should think me dead." Concerning the woman for whose sake he became a
nihilist, he never spoke. But the experiences I had passed through at
the home of the princess, the preceding night, made me wise concerning
the identity of the woman who had influenced him. Indeed I had had it
from her own lips that she had played with this man, even as she had
hoodwinked the prince. What the relations between her and Moret might
have been, in what manner they had been brought together in the past,
and by what transformation of individuality he had dared to raise his
eyes to a princess, I could not even conjecture. There was no doubt,
however, that she had used him for one of the marionettes in her puppet
show; and now he, poor devil, because of it, was safer in a prison
cell, and no doubt happier, too, than he would have been at liberty.

I wanted the man to talk and to talk about her, and I must confess what
I did not at the moment realize that my desire found its source more in
personal resentment against any confidential passages that may have
taken place between those two, than in my plain duty to the cause I was
serving.

There are many kinds of jealousy, and each kind will find its
expression through innumerable channels. If I had been charged with
jealousy at that moment, I would have repudiated the suggestion with
scorn and contempt; and yet I was jealous.

I had thought rather deeply upon this approaching conversation with
Moret, while on my way to interview him, but I was no nearer to a
determination regarding what I should say to him, when I entered the
room he occupied in the prison, than I had been when the idea first
occurred to me. Now when I entered the room where he was imprisoned, I
said:

"Why is it, Moret, that you have never taken any further advantage of
my promise that you c