lf, she
dragged me across the lawn and behind the bushes. You followed us,
however, and when a barn appeared in sight she pushed one of the doors
which half opened and let us through. We managed to slip quickly through
the lumber in the dark and knocked up against a ladder. This we climbed
and reached a loft in which we took shelter. You entered at that
moment....

"You know the rest: how you discovered the two hanging skeletons; how
your attention was drawn to us by an imprudent movement of Florence; your
attack, to which I replied by brandishing the first weapon with which
chance provided me; lastly, our flight through the window in the roof,
under the fire of your revolver. We were free. But in the evening, in the
train, Florence fainted. While bringing her to I perceived that one of
your bullets had wounded her in the shoulder. The wound was slight and
did not hurt her, but it was enough to increase the extreme tension of
her nerves. When you saw us--at Le Mans station wasn't it?--she was
asleep, with her head on my shoulder."

Don Luis had not once interrupted the latter part of this narrative,
which was told in a more and more agitated voice and quickened by an
accent of profound truth. Thanks to a superhuman effort of attention, he
noted Sauverand's least words and actions in his mind. And as these words
were uttered and these actions performed, he received the impression of
another woman who rose up beside the real Florence, a woman unspotted and
innocent of all the shame which he had attributed to her on the strength
of events.

Nevertheless, he did not yet give in. How could Florence possibly be
innocent? No, no, the evidence of his eyes, which had seen, and the
evidence of his reason, which had judged, both rebelled against any such
contention.

He would not admit that Florence could suddenly be different from what
she really was to him: a crafty, cunning, cruel, blood-thirsty monster.
No, no, the man was lying with infernal cleverness. He put things with a
skill amounting to genius, until it was no longer possible to
differentiate between the false and the true, or to distinguish the light
from the darkness.

He was lying! He was lying! And yet how sweet were the lies he told! How
beautiful was that imaginary Florence, the Florence compelled by destiny
to commit acts which she loathed, but free of all crime, free of remorse,
humane and pitiful, with her clear eyes and her snow-white hands! And how
goo