the prey of some nightmare, and his eyes
searched M. Ginory's face with a sort of agony. The expression struck
Ginory. One would have said that a ghost had suddenly appeared to
Dantin.

"You say that it resembles me?"

"Yes. Look carefully! At first the portrait is vague; on closer
examination it comes out from the halo which surrounds it, and the
person who appears there bears your air, your features, your
characteristics"----

"It is possible," said Dantin. "It seems to resemble me; it seems as if
I were looking at myself in a pocket mirror. But what does that
signify?"

"That signifies--Oh! I am going to astonish you. That signifies"--M.
Ginory turned toward his registrar: "You saw the other evening, Favarel,
the experiment in which Dr. Oudin showed us the heart and lungs
performing their functions in the thorax of a living man, made visible
by the Roentgen Rays. Well! This is not any more miraculous. These
photographs (he turned now toward Dantin) were taken of the retina of
the dead man's eye. They are the reflection, the reproduction of the
image implanted there, the picture of the last living being contemplated
in the agony; the last visual sensation which the unfortunate man
experienced. The retina has given to us--as a witness--the image of the
living person seen by the dead man for the last time!"

A deep silence fell upon the three men in that little room, where one of
them alone, lost his foothold at this strange revelation. For the
Magistrate it was a decisive moment; when all had been said, when the
man having been questioned closely, jumps at the foregone conclusion. As
for the registrar, however blase he may have become by these daily
experiences, it was the decisive moment! the moment when, the line drawn
from the water, the fish is landed, writhing on the hook!

Jacques Dantin, with an instinctive movement, had rejected, pushed back
on the table those photographs which burned his fingers like the cards
in which some fortune teller has deciphered the signs of death.

"Well?" asked M. Ginory.

"Well!" repeated Dantin in a strangled tone, either not comprehending or
comprehending too much, struggling as if under the oppression of a
nightmare.

"How do you explain how your face, your shadow if you prefer, was found
reflected in Rovere's eyes, and that in his agony, this was probably
what he saw; yes, saw bending over him?"

Dantin cast a frightened glance around the room, and asked himself if