d not know--I have been kept a prisoner
here."

The Commissaire cut her short with a cry of satisfaction.

"Listen! listen!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Here is a theory which
accounts for all, which combines Vauquier's idea with ours, and
Vauquier's idea is, I think, very just, up to a point. Suppose, M.
Hanaud, that the girl was going to meet her lover, but the lover is the
murderer. Then all becomes clear. She does not run away to him; she
opens the door for him and lets him in."

Both Hanaud and Ricardo stole a glance at Wethermill. How did he take
the theory? Wethermill was leaning against the wall, his eyes closed,
his face white and contorted with a spasm of pain. But he had the air
of a man silently enduring an outrage rather than struck down by the
conviction that the woman he loved was worthless.

"It is not for me to say, monsieur," Helene Vauquier continued. "I only
tell you what I know. I am a woman, and it would be very difficult for
a girl who was eagerly expecting her lover so to act that another woman
would not know it. However uncultivated and ignorant the other woman
was, that at all events she would know. The knowledge would spread to
her of itself, without a word. Consider, gentlemen!" And suddenly
Helene Vauquier smiled. "A young girl tingling with excitement from
head to foot, eager that her beauty just at this moment should be more
fresh, more sweet than ever it was, careful that her dress should set
it exquisitely off. Imagine it! Her lips ready for the kiss! Oh, how
should another woman not know? I saw Mlle. Celie, her cheeks rosy, her
eyes bright. Never had she looked so lovely. The pale-green hat upon
her fair head heavy with its curls! From head to foot she looked
herself over, and then she sighed--she sighed with pleasure because she
looked so pretty. That was Mlle. Celie last night, monsieur. She
gathered up her train, took her long white gloves in the other hand,
and ran down the stairs, her heels clicking on the wood, her buckles
glittering. At the bottom she turned and said to me:

"'Remember, Helene, you can go to bed.' That was it monsieur."

And now violently the rancour of Helene Vauquier's feelings burst out
once more.

"For her the fine clothes, the pleasure, and the happiness. For me--I
could go to bed!"

Hanaud looked again at the description which Helene Vauquier had
written out, and read it through carefully. Then he asked a question,
of which Ricardo did not quite see