way near watching her, sprang
out when he saw the assault, and thrust his stick between the feet of
the flying man, flinging him face forward on the pavement. The next
instant he placed his foot upon Jean's neck holding him down as if he
were a snake.

"You villain!" he cried. "Strike a woman, would you?"

Jean lay there as if stunned, and two gens d'armes came pantingly upon
the scene.

"This scoundrel," said the man, "has just assaulted a woman. I saw
him."

"He has done more than that," said one of the officers, grimly, as if,
after all, the striking of a woman was but a trivial affair.

They secured the young man, and dragged him with them. The girl came up
to them and said, falteringly--

"It is all a mistake, it was an accident. He didn't mean to do it."

"Oh, he didn't, and pray how do you know?" asked one of the officers.

"You little devil," said Jean to the girl, through his clinched teeth,
"it's all your fault."

The officers hurried him off.

"I think," said one, "that we should have arrested the girl; you heard
what she said."

"Yes," said the other, "but we have enough on our hands now, if the
crowd find out who he is."

Lurine thought of following them, but she was so stunned by the words
that her lover had said to her, rather than by the blow he had given
her that she turned her steps sadly towards the Pont Royal and went to
her room.

The next morning she did not go through the gardens, as usual, to her
work, and when she entered the Pharmacie de Siam, the proprietor cried
out, "Here she is, the vixen! Who would have thought it of her? You
wretch, you stole my drugs to give to that villain!"

"I did not," said Lurine, stoutly. "I put the money in the till for
them."

"Hear her! She confesses!" said the proprietor.

The two concealed officers stepped forward and arrested her where she
stood as the accomplice of Jean Duret, who, the night before, had flung
a bomb in the crowded Avenue de l'Opera.

Even the prejudiced French judges soon saw that the girl was innocent
of all evil intent, and was but the victim of the scoundrel who passed
by the name of Jean Duret. He was sentenced for life; she was set free.
He had tried to place the blame on her, like the craven he was, to
shield another woman. This was what cut Lurine to the heart. She might
have tried to find an excuse for his crime, but she realized that he
had never cared for her, and had but used her as his tool to get
possessi