sed at last, Ivan, instead of going to bed, sat up, gun in hand, and
watched. He passed many nights thus, and his patience was well nigh
exhausted when, during one of the vigils, he fell asleep, dreaming as
usual of the blue eyes and golden curls of Breda, whose beauty held him
just as much enthralled as ever. From this slumber he was awakened by
loud screams for help. Seizing his gun, and taking a random aim at a
huge white wolf as he went (though without stopping to see the effects
of the shot), he ran to his mother's bedside. She was dead. Her throat
and body were slit; but she was not eaten.

Wild with grief and thirsting for revenge, Ivan started off in pursuit
of the wolf, and discovered, in the passage, a track of blood which
terminated at his wife's door. Receiving no reply when he asked for
admittance, he entered the room and found Breda lying on the floor, in
her nightdress, the blood streaming from a wound in her shoulder. Ivan
knelt down and examined her. She had been struck by a bullet, and the
bullet fitted the bore of his gun.

He knew the truth then--the truth he might have known all along, had he
not, in his blind love, thrust it far from him--and, in the sudden
alteration of his feeling, he raised his knife to kill her. But Breda
opened her eyes, and the weapon fell from his hand.

"You know part of my secret now," she whispered, "but you don't know
everything. I am a werwolf, not by inheritance, but of my own free will.
In order to become one I ate the blue flowers in the wood. I did so to
be avenged on my husband."

"Your husband!" Ivan cried; "good God! then you were a widow when I met
you?"

"Yes," Breda said slowly and with apparent effort. "I was forced into my
first marriage by my all too worldly parents, and my husband ill-used
and beat me!"

"The devil! the cold-hearted, cowardly devil!" Ivan ejaculated, "I would
have killed him."

"That is what I did," Breda remarked; "I did kill him, and it was in
order to make certain of killing him that I became a werwolf."

"Did you eat him?" Ivan asked, horribly fascinated.

"Don't ask questions," Breda said, averting her eyes, "and for God's
sake don't lose any more time. As you love me, screen me from detection;
hide all traces of to-night's handiwork as quickly as possible."

As usual, Ivan did as she requested him, and giving out that his mother
had died suddenly, from heart failure, he had her interred with as
little publicity as possibl