me--all but honour--all but honour," he added, a wild fire in his eyes,
a trembling seizing him. "Your honour is yours forever. I say so. I say
so, and I have proved it. Kiss me, Madelinette--kiss me once," he added,
in a quick whisper.

"My poor, poor Louis!" she said, laid a soothing hand upon his arm, and
leaned towards him. He snatched her to his breast, and kissed her twice
in a very agony of joy, then let her go. He listened for an instant to
the growing noise without, then said in a hoarse voice:

"Now, I will tell you, Madelinette. They are coming for me--don't you
hear them? They are coming to take me; but they shall not have me.
They shall not have me--" he glanced to a little door that led into a
bath-room at his right.

"Louis-Louis!" she said in a sudden fright, for though his words seemed
mad, a strange quiet sanity was in all he did. "What have you done? Who
are coming?" she asked in agony, and caught him by the arm.

"I killed Tardif. He is there in the hut in the garden--dead! I was
seen, and they are coming to take me."

With a cry she ran to the door that led into the hall, and locked it.
She listened, then turned her face to Louis.

"You killed him!" she gasped. "Louis! Louis!" Her face was like ashes.

"I stabbed him to death. It was all I could do, and I did it. He
slandered you. I went mad, and did it. Now--"

There was a knocking at the door, and a voice calling--a peremptory
voice.

"There is only one way," he said. "They shall not take me. I will not
be dragged to gaol for crowds to jeer at. I will not be sent to the
scaffold, to your shame."

He ran to the door of the bath-room and flung it open. "If my life is to
pay the price, then--!"

She came blindly towards him, stretching out her hands.

"Louis! Louis!" was all that she could say.

He caught her hands and kissed them, then stepped swiftly back into the
little bath-room, and locked the door, as the door of the room she was
in was burst open, and two constables and a half-dozen men crowded into
the room.

She stood with her back to the bath-room door, panting, and white, and
anguished, and her ears strained to the terrible thing inside the place
behind her.

The men understood, and came towards her. "Stand back," she said. "You
shall not have him. You shall not have him. Ah, don't you hear? He
is dying--O God, O God!" she cried, with tearless eyes and upturned
face--"Ah, let it be soon! Ah, let him die soon!"

The m