rs perhaps, but was not to Rouletabille.

"Well, yes, I wished to say this to you: Don't write to me any more.
Don't speak to me. Don't see me. Go away from here, monsieur; go away.
They will have your life. And if you have found out anything, forget it.
Ah, on the head of your mother, forget it, or you are lost. That is what
I wished to tell you. And now, you go."

She grasped his hand in a quick sympathetic movement that she seemed
instantly to regret.

"You go away," she repeated.

Rouletabille still held his place before her. She turned from him; she
did not wish to hear anything further.

"Mademoiselle," said he, "you are watched closer than ever. Who will
take Michael Nikolaievitch's place?"

"Madman, be silent! Hush!"

"I am here."

He said this with such simple bravery that tears sprang to her eyes.

"Dear man! Poor man! Dear brave man!" She did not know what to say. Her
emotion checked all utterance. But it was necessary for her to enable
him to understand that there was nothing he could do to help her in her
sad straits.

"No. If they knew what you have just said, what you have proposed now,
you would be dead to-morrow. Don't let them suspect. And above all,
don't try to see me anywhere. Go back to papa at once. We have been here
too long. What if they learn of it?--and they learn everything! They are
everywhere, and have ears everywhere."

"Mademoiselle, just one word more, a single word. Do you doubt now that
Michael tried to poison your father?"

"Ah, I wish to believe it. I wish to. I wish to believe it for your
sake, my poor boy."

Rouletabille desired something besides "I wish to believe it for your
sake, my poor boy." He was far from being satisfied. She saw him turn
pale. She tried to reassure him while her trembling hands raised the lid
of the wine-chest.

"What makes me think you are right is that I have decided myself that
only one and the same person, as you said, climbed to the window of the
little balcony. Yes, no one can doubt that, and you have reasoned well."

But he persisted still.

"And yet, in spite of that, you are not entirely sure, since you say, 'I
wish to believe it, my poor boy.'"

"Monsieur Rouletabille, someone might have tried to poison my father,
and not have come by way of the window."

"No, that is impossible."

"Nothing is impossible to them."

And she turned her head away again.

"Why, why," she said, with her voice entirely changed and quite
indi