e to lose."

"Can I?" asked Lupin, making a desperate effort. "I doubt if I have the
strength."

"Drink this."

She poured some milk into a cup; and, as she handed it to him, her lace
opened, leaving the face uncovered.

"You!" he stammered. "It's you!... It's you who ... it was you who
were...."

He stared in amazement at this woman whose features presented so
striking a resemblance to Gabriel's, whose delicate, regular face had
the same pallor, whose mouth wore the same hard and forbidding
expression. No sister could have borne so great a likeness to her
brother. There was not a doubt possible: it was the identical person.
And, without believing for a moment that Gabriel had concealed himself
in a woman's clothes, Lupin, on the contrary, received the distinct
impression that it was a woman standing beside him and that the
stripling who had pursued him with his hatred and struck him with the
dagger was in very deed a woman. In order to follow their trade with
greater ease, the Dugrival pair had accustomed her to disguise herself
as a boy.

"You ... you ...!" he repeated. "Who would have suspected ...?"

She emptied the contents of a phial into the cup:

"Drink this cordial," she said.

He hesitated, thinking of poison.

She added:

"It was I who saved you."

"Of course, of course," he said. "It was you who removed the bullets
from the revolver?"

"Yes."

"And you who hid the knife?"

"Here it is, in my pocket."

"And you who smashed the window-pane while your aunt was throttling me?"

"Yes, it was I, with the paper-weight on the table: I threw it into the
street."

"But why? Why?" he asked, in utter amazement.

"Drink the cordial."

"Didn't you want me to die? But then why did you stab me to begin with?"

"Drink the cordial."

He emptied the cup at a draught, without quite knowing the reason of his
sudden confidence.

"Dress yourself ... quickly," she commanded, retiring to the window.

He obeyed and she came back to him, for he had dropped into a chair,
exhausted.

"We must go now, we must, we have only just time.... Collect your
strength."

She bent forward a little, so that he might lean on her shoulder, and
turned toward the door and the staircase.

And Lupin walked as one walks in a dream, one of those queer dreams in
which the most inconsequent things occur, a dream that was the happy
sequel of the terrible nightmare in which he had lived for the past
fortnight.

A though