rmuring: "She is guilty beyond a doubt."

"Do you recognize the nail which deprived your husband of life?" said
the judge, arising from his chair, looking like a corpse rising from
the grave.

"Yes, sir," answered Gabriela mechanically.

"That is to say, you admit that you assassinated your husband?" asked
the judge, in a voice that trembled with his great suffering.

"Sir," answered the accused, "I do not care to live any more, but
before I die I would like to make a statement."

The judge fell back in his chair and then asked me by a look: "What is
she going to say?"

I, myself, was almost stupefied by fear.

Gabriela stood before them, her hands clasped and a far-away look in
her large, dark eyes.

"I am going to confess," she said, "and my confession will be my
defense, although it will not be sufficient to save me from the
scaffold. Listen to me, all of you! Why deny that which is
self-evident? I was alone with my husband when he died. The servants
and the doctor have testified to this. Hence, only I could have killed
him. Yes, I committed the crime, but another man forced me to do it."

The judge trembled when he heard these words, but, dominating his
emotion, he asked courageously:

"The name of that man, madame? Tell us at once the name of the
scoundrel!"

Gabriela looked at the judge with an expression of infinite love, as a
mother would look at the child she worshiped, and answered: "By a
single word I could drag this man into the depths with me. But I will
not. No one shall ever know his name, for he has loved me and I love
him. Yes, I love him, although I know he will do nothing to save me!"

The judge half rose from his chair and extended his hands beseechingly,
but she looked at him as if to say: "Be careful! You will betray
yourself, and it will do no good."

He sank back into his chair, and Gabriela continued her story in a
quiet, firm voice:

"I was forced to marry a man I hated. I hated him more after I married
him than I did before. I lived three years in martyrdom. One day there
came into my life a man whom I loved. He demanded that I should marry
him, he asked me to fly with him to a heaven of happiness and love. He
was a man of exceptional character, high and noble, whose only fault
was that he loved me too much. Had I told him: 'I have deceived you, I
am not a widow; my husband is living,' he would have left me at once. I
invented a thousand excuses, but he always answered: 'Be m