not have gone away for some
time ... Well then?"

But other obscurer suggestions whispered to him:

"She was her friend! ... They were so fond of each other! Was it
friendship or love? Oh! love apparently. Well, it would surely be
avenging morality, if this woman were forced to be faithless to that
monstrous love?" And suddenly the man turned round and said in a low and
trembling voice: "Look here! If I give you twenty francs instead of ten,
I suppose you could buy some flowers for her, as well?"

The unhappy woman's face brightened with pleasure and gratitude.

"Will you really give me twenty?"

"Yes," he replied, "and more perhaps. It quite depends upon yourself."

And with the quiet conscience of an honorable man who, at the same time,
is not a fool he said gravely:

"You need only be very complaisant."

And he added, mentally: "Especially as I deserve it, as in giving you
twenty francs I am performing a good action."

VIOLATED

"Really," Paul repeated, "really!"

"Yes, I who am here before you have been violated, and violated by!...
But if I were to tell you immediately by whom, there would be no story,
eh? And as you want a story, eh? And as you want a story, I will tell
you all about it from beginning to end, and I shall begin at the
beginning.

"I had been shooting over the waste land in the heart of Brittany for a
week, which borders on the Black Mountain. It is a desolate and wild
country, but it abounds in game. One can walk for hours without meeting
a human being, and when one meets anybody, it is just the same as if one
had not, for the people are absolutely ignorant of French, and when I
got to an inn at night, I had to employ signs to let the people know
that I wanted supper and bed.

"As I happened to be in a melancholy frame of mind at the time, that
solitude delighted me, and my dog's companionship was quite enough for
me, and so you may guess my irritation when I perceived one morning that
I was being followed, absolutely followed, by another sportsman who
seemed to wish to enter into conversation with me. The day before, I had
already noticed him obstructing the horizon several times, and I had
attributed it to the chances of sport, which brought us both to the same
likely spots for game, but now I could not be mistaken! The fellow was
evidently following me, and was stretching his little pair of compasses
as much as he could, so as to keep up with my long strides, and took
s