, with one of his knees on the
chair beside which Don Luis was standing, he stammered:

"Save her, I implore you! You have it in your power. Yes, you can do
anything. I learnt to know you in fighting you. There was more than
your genius defending you against me; there is a luck that protects
you. You are different from other men. Why, the mere fact of your not
killing me at once, though I had pursued you so savagely, the fact of
your listening to the inconceivable truth of the innocence of all three
of us and accepting it as admissible, surely these constitute an
unprecedented miracle.

"While I was waiting for you and preparing to speak to you, I received
an intuition of it all!" he exclaimed. "I saw clearly that the man who
was proclaiming Marie's innocence with nothing to guide him but his
reason, I saw that this man alone could save her and that he would save
her. Ah, I beseech you, save her--and save her at once. Otherwise it
will be too late.

"In a few days Marie will have ended her life. She cannot go on living in
prison. You see, she means to die. No obstacle can prevent her. Can any
one be prevented from committing suicide? And how horrible if she were to
die!... Oh, if the law requires a criminal I will confess anything that I
am asked to. I will joyfully accept every charge and pay every penalty,
provided that Marie is free! Save her!... I did not know, I do not yet
know the best thing to be done! Save her from prison and death, save her,
for God's sake, save her!"

Tears flowed down his anguish-stricken face. Florence also was crying,
bowed down with sorrow. And Perenna suddenly felt the most terrible dread
steal over him.

Although, ever since the beginning of the interview, a fresh conviction
had gradually been mastering him, it was only as it were a glance that he
became aware of it. Suddenly he perceived that his belief in Sauverand's
words was unrestricted, and that Florence was perhaps not the loathsome
creature that he had had the right to think, but a woman whose eyes did
not lie and whose face and soul were alike beautiful.

Suddenly he learnt that the two people before him, as well as Marie
Fauville, for love of whom they had fought so unskilful a fight, were
imprisoned in an iron circle which their efforts would not succeed in
breaking. And that circle traced by an unknown hand he, Perenna, had
drawn tighter around them with the most ruthless determination.

"If only it is not too late!"