ave orders that no one should follow him,
and strode across the yard to join his friend.

CHAPTER X.

While this violent and yet almost ridiculous scene was enacted in the
court, Jansen had been mounting the dark stairs with a heavy foot and a
heavier breath. No sound of a human being was heard in the house; only
the roaring and crackling of the open fire in the kitchen below. Half
way up the stairs he stood still and listened; it seemed to him as if
he heard the voice of his child. But it was only the ringing in his
ears, as the blood seemed to surge and boil in his veins.

"She will be asleep by this time," he said to himself. "So much the
better! She won't hear then what I have to say to her mother."

He trembled all over. And yet he had no fear of this meeting, that was
to be the last. He was afraid of himself, of the dark, violent spirit
that made him clinch his fists and gnash his teeth. "Be quiet!" he said
to himself, "be quiet! She is not worth such fury!"

He hastened up the last few steps and found himself in a long, dark
corridor. At one end a thin ray of light made its way through a
keyhole, and a broader gleam shone through the crack between the door
and the bent and warping threshold.

"It must be there!" he said. He took off his hat, and passed his
hand through his wet hair. "Let us make an end of it!" said he,
unconsciously repeating over and over again the words "an end!--an
end--an end!"

Then he stood before the door and listened. A voice which he did not
recognize was speaking; he stooped down and peeped in through the
keyhole. His eye lighted directly upon the face of an elderly woman who
was talking earnestly, but perfectly quietly. He recognized the old
singer, his wife's mother, whom he had always disliked even at the time
of his maddest infatuation. She sat in a corner of the sofa, and drank
now and then, in the short pauses she made, from a little silver cup
that stood by the side of a traveling-flask. At the same time she broke
up a biscuit and put the pieces in her mouth with an affected movement
of the hand, all the while displaying her false teeth to advantage.
Near her, sunk back in an arm-chair, lay her daughter; she was dressed
entirely in black, which became her white skin and deep blue eyes
charmingly. She was playing with a pair of scissors, making them flash
in the candle-light, and looked as wearied and indifferent to all about
her, as