" asked Ricardo.

"You know now," said Hanaud. "They were two cushions, both indented,
and indented in different ways. The one at the head was irregularly
indented--something shaped had pressed upon it. It might have been a
face--it might not; and there was a little brown stain which was fresh
and which was blood. The second cushion had two separate impressions,
and between them the cushion was forced up in a thin ridge; and these
impressions were more definite. I measured the distance between the two
cushions, and I found this: that supposing--and it was a large
supposition--the cushions had not been moved since those impressions
were made, a girl of Mlle. Celie's height lying stretched out upon the
sofa would have her face pressing down upon one cushion and her feet
and insteps upon the other. Now, the impressions upon the second
cushion and the thin ridge between them were just the impressions which
might have been made by a pair of shoes held close together. But that
would not be a natural attitude for any one, and the mark upon the head
cushion was very deep. Supposing that my conjectures were true, then a
woman would only lie like that because she was helpless, because she
had been flung there, because she could not lift herself--because, in a
word, her hands were tied behind her back and her feet fastened
together. Well, then, follow this train of reasoning, my friend!
Suppose my conjectures--and we had nothing but conjectures to build
upon-were true, the woman flung upon the sofa could not be Helene
Vauquier, for she would have said so; she could have had no reason for
concealment. But it must be Mlle. Celie. There was the slit in the one
cushion and the stain on the other which, of course, I had not
accounted for. There was still, too, the puzzle of the footsteps
outside the glass doors. If Mlle. Celie had been bound upon the sofa,
how came she to run with her limbs free from the house? There was a
question--a question not easy to answer."

"Yes," said Mr. Ricardo.

"Yes; but there was also another question. Suppose that Mlle. Celie
was, after all, the victim, not the accomplice; suppose she had been
flung tied upon the sofa; suppose that somehow the imprint of her shoes
upon the ground had been made, and that she had afterwards been carried
away, so that the maid might be cleared of all complicity--in that case
it became intelligible why the other footprints were scored out and
hers left. The presumption of