th roses; and she caught now in her hands the
folds of the tablecloth, while he standing there before her saw these
signs of emotion. Also he observed that her eyes sparkled with an
unnatural light, and that her upper lip, owing to some nervous
contraction, was drawn back a little, so that her small white teeth
were very visible. And as he so observed her and noticed these things,
the certainty came to him that they had met before. But where? He
could not remember at first--could not recall where he had seen a
woman seated at a table as she was now seated, clutching the folds of
the cloth in her hands.

"My countrymen," he said, still vainly wondering, "have not often
suffered as I have suffered--have not such reasons, perhaps, for
quitting their native land forever."

"What reasons?" and as she spoke her nervousness was such that she
released the folds of the cloth which her left hand grasped, and with
that hand toyed with the slim vase before her which contained the
roses.

And this further action stirred his memory still more. When had he
seen a woman seated thus, her hand trifling first with a table cover,
then with some object on the table itself? When?

"Reasons so deep, so profound," he said, "that scarce any who knew of
them would be surprised at my resolve: a career cruelly blighted for
no fault of my own; my life attempted secretly, murderously; my little
child doomed to assassination; the wrongdoer in my power, a
treacherous stab from behind--" He paused amazed.

The woman's right hand--the left now gathering up the folds of the
cloth again in its small palm--had dropped to the side of her dress,
was thrust into a pocket in that side, was feeling for, perhaps
grasping, something within that pocket. That action aided remembrance
and cleared away all wonder. Swift as the lightning flashes, there
flashed to his recollection the woman who had sat at the table of the
inn--the woman whom, as he and De Roquemaure had once changed places
as they fought, he had seen seize the flask of wine with her left
hand, her right grasping her small dagger. _And this was the woman!_
The drawn-back lip, the glassy stare with which she regarded him in
the swift-coming darkness of the summer evening, all reproduced the
scene of that night--a scene which, until now, he had almost forgotten
amid the crowd of other events that had taken place since then.
Advancing a step nearer to her, so that he stood towering above, he
said, h