though she had just come home from the theatre where she been
acting in some tiresome piece with only tolerable success.

Suddenly she sprang up with a loud shriek. The door had opened
noiselessly; and, instead of the young companion whom she had expected
to see enter, the very man stood before her, from whom she had fled to
this obscure hiding-place.

The words died on her lips; even the old actress, who was not
ordinarily easily disconcerted, sat as if she were petrified; and only
her fingers, still convulsively crumbling up the biscuits, seemed to be
alive.

"Leave the room; I have something to say to my wife!" Jansen said to
her in a low voice and without violence. "Do you hear what I say? Go
away this instant! but through this door, by which I entered."

He wanted to prevent her from taking the child with her, for he took it
for granted that it had been put to bed in the adjoining room.

The women exchanged a quick look. These few moments sufficed to restore
the younger one to self-possession.

"You must not leave me," she said. "In whatever I am to hear--since I
am conscious of my innocence--I need shun no witnesses, least of all my
own mother."

And as she spoke she sank back again into the chair, and passed her
hand across her eyes, as though overcome by painful memories. The old
woman on the sofa did not move. They could only hear how she murmured
softly to herself: "Good God! Good God! What a scene! What a
catastrophe!"

"I repeat my demand!" the sculptor said with emphasis. "Will you wait
for me to take your arm and lead you out?"

"Very good; I will go; I will not let matters be brought to the worst,"
cried the mother, rising with a pathetic gesture. Then she bent down
over Lucie and whispered something in her ear. "No, no," hastily
answered the latter, "not a word to him. That would only make the
matter worse. Go, if it must be so. I am not afraid!"

She spoke the last words aloud and facing toward Jansen, whom she
looked straight in the eyes without a trace of terror. Any stranger
would have been deceived by this air of conscious innocence.

The old singer slammed the door behind her. They heard her, as she
passed down the corridor. But it did not escape Jansen's ears that she
crept back and remained standing outside the door to listen.

"Let her stay, for what I care!" he said to himself, "as long as I
needn't see her face." Then came again the feverish: "We must make an
end--an end--an end