, evidently waiting for her, but he was not
waiting for anything like this. She looked at him for a moment, then
drew herself into a chair, and shrieked with hysterical laughter.
Gustave Boucheafen was cautious. He hurried to the door, shut and
locked it, returned and grasped her arm firmly.

"What is this? Control yourself--consider!"

Her wild laughter was already dying away; it was evident that she had
to exercise rigid self-control to prevent it from turning to still
wilder sobbing. She sat for a few moments with her hands pressed over
her eyes, her breast heaving convulsively. When she looked at him,
rising as she did so, her eyes dilated and gleamed.

"This night," she said--"this night of all others to choose!"

"To choose for what?"

"To make love to me! Think of it!"

"Bah! What did I tell you but just now?" he returned sullenly,
releasing her arm. "You laughed. Fool as he was--tool as you had made
him, he was not fool enough for that, you said. Eh--was he not? I knew
how it would be. Did I not tell you so before I even entered this
house?" Looking at her, he laughed grimly. "What a fool--an idiot!"

"Bah!" she retorted, with a bitter smile. "What, think you, does he
know? I could laugh at myself, for I am almost sorry!"

"For him?"

"Why not? He is a good man in his way, and he has been kind. Don't look
at me like that!" she cried with sudden passion, a swift rush of blood
tinting the pallor of her cheeks. "What do you think he is to me, this
man, but the tool I have made him? He has not harmed me--he represents
nothing that has harmed me; and I would not hurt him, as I would not
hurt a child."

"Ah, that is all?" He looked at her keenly. "Good--and yet last
night----"

"Well," she said defiantly, "last night I saved him. What then? He
could do us no harm--he had done us good, and our use for him was
nearly over--I may say now that it is over."

"Unless we fail."

"Fail!" she echoed contemptuously.

"What did you say to him?" he asked after a moment's pause.

"Nothing. What should I say? I rushed away. What does it matter? I
shall not see him again."

"True." He glanced at the clock. "Eight," he said, turning toward the
door, as though to close the conversation by leaving the room. "You
will not forget the time?"

"I shall not."

"And," he added warningly, "you will not blench--this time?"

She did not hear him. She had drawn from her breast the tiny roll of
red-marked paper; and, hol