is wife from Geneva in the carriage with
their little boy, a pretty child of five. Frances played and joked
with him.

"Has madam also a son?" his mother asked civilly.

She said yes, and presently added, "My son has now a great trouble, but
I am going to relieve him of it."

The woman, startled, stared at her.

"Is it not right for me to rid him of it?" she demanded loudly.

"Mais oui, certainement," said the Swiss. She watched Frances after
that furtively. Her eyes, she thought, were quite sane. But how
eccentric all of these Americans were!

Mrs. Waldeaux reached Vannes at nightfall. At last! Here was the
place in this great empty world where he was.

When the diligence entered the courtyard, George was so near to the
gate that the smoke of his cigar was blown into her face, but he did
not see her. He was lean and pale, and his eyes told his misery. When
she saw them his mother grew sick from head to foot with a sudden
nausea. This was his wife's doing. She was killing him! Frances
hurried into the inn, her legs giving way under her. She could not
speak to him. She must think what to do.

She was taken to her room. It was dark, and across the corridor she
saw Lisa in her lighted chamber. This was good luck! God had put the
creature at once into her hands to deal with!

She was conscious of a strange exaltation, as if from wine--as if she
would never need to sleep nor eat again. Her thoughts came and went
like flashes of fire. She watched Lisa as she would a vampire, a
creeping deadly beast. Pauline Felix--all that was adulterous and vile
in women--there it was!

Her mind too, as never before, was full of a haughty complacency in
herself. She felt like the member of some petty sect who is sure that
God communes with him inside of his altar rails, while the man is
outside whom he believes that God made only to be damned.

Lisa began to undress. Frances quickly turned away, ashamed of peeping
into her chamber. But the one fact burned on into her brain:

The woman was killing George.

If God would rid the world of her! If a storm should rise now, and the
lightning strike the house, and these stone walls should fall on her,
now--now!

But the walls stood firm and the moonlight shone tranquilly on the
world outside.

She told herself to be calm--to be just. But there was no justice
while this woman went on with her work! God saw. He meant her to be
stopped. Frances prayed to hi