e rooms. When
he had gained the top he had to deposit the wounded man on the floor
while he searched for the chamber door by striking matches, of which he
fortunately had a supply in his pocket, and only when he had found and
opened it did he return and raise him in his arms again. Entering, he
laid him on the little iron bed that faced the window, which he threw
open to its full extent in his great need of air and light. It was broad
day; he dropped on his knees beside the bed, sobbing as if his heart
would break, suddenly abandoned by all his strength as the fearful
thought again smote him that he had slain his friend.

Minutes passed; he was hardly surprised when, raising his eyes, he saw
Henriette standing by the bed. It was perfectly natural: her brother was
dying, she had come. He had not even seen her enter the room; for all he
knew she might have been standing there for hours. He sank into a chair
and watched her with stupid eyes as she hovered about the bed, her heart
wrung with mortal anguish at sight of her brother lying there senseless,
in his blood-stained garments. Then his memory began to act again; he
asked:

"Tell me, did you close the street door?"

She answered with an affirmative motion of the head, and as she came
toward him, extending her two hands in her great need of sympathy and
support, he added:

"You know it was I who killed him."

She did not understand; she did not believe him. He felt no flutter in
the two little hands that rested confidingly in his own.

"It was I who killed him--yes, 'twas over yonder, behind a barricade, I
did it. He was fighting on one side, I on the other--"

There began to be a fluttering of the little hands.

"We were like drunken men, none of us knew what he as about--it was I
who killed him."

Then Henriette, shivering, pale as death, withdrew her hands, fixing on
him a gaze that was full of horror. Father of Mercy, was the end of all
things come! was her crushed and bleeding heart to know no peace for
ever more! Ah, that Jean, of whom she had been thinking that very day,
happy in the unshaped hope that perhaps she might see him once again!
And it was he who had done that abominable thing; and yet he had saved
Maurice, for was it not he who had brought him home through so many
perils? She could not yield her hands to him now without a revolt of all
her being, but she uttered a cry into which she threw the last hope of
her tortured and distracted heart.