ance out of gear. This blow came at a moment when he was
least able to bear it.

Jeanne had been arrested! Jeanne was in the hands of those brutes, whom
he, Armand, had regarded yesterday with insurmountable loathing! Jeanne
was in prison--she was arrested--she would be tried, condemned, and all
because of him!

The thought was so awful that it brought him to the verge of mania. He
watched as in a dream the form of the concierge shuffling his way down
the oak staircase; his portly figure assumed Gargantuan proportions, the
candle which he carried looked like the dancing flames of hell, through
which grinning faces, hideous and contortioned, mocked at him and
leered.

Then suddenly everything was dark. The light had disappeared round the
bend of the stairs; grinning faces and ghoulish visions vanished; he
only saw Jeanne, his dainty, exquisite Jeanne, in the hands of those
brutes. He saw her as he had seen a year and a half ago the victims of
those bloodthirsty wretches being dragged before a tribunal that was
but a mockery of justice; he heard the quick interrogatory, and the
responses from her perfect lips, that exquisite voice of hers veiled by
tones of anguish. He heard the condemnation, the rattle of the tumbril
on the ill-paved streets--saw her there with hands clasped together, her
eyes--

Great God! he was really going mad!

Like a wild creature driven forth he started to run down the stairs,
past the concierge, who was just entering his lodge, and who now turned
in surly anger to watch this man running away like a lunatic or a fool,
out by the front door and into the street. In a moment he was out of
the little square; then like a hunted hare he still ran down the Rue St.
Honore, along its narrow, interminable length. His hat had fallen from
his head, his hair was wild all round his face, the rain weighted the
cloak upon his shoulders; but still he ran.

His feet made no noise on the muddy pavement. He ran on and on, his
elbows pressed to his sides, panting, quivering, intent but upon one
thing--the goal which he had set himself to reach.

Jeanne was arrested. He did not know where to look for her, but he did
know whither he wanted to go now as swiftly as his legs would carry him.

It was still dark, but Armand St. Just was a born Parisian, and he knew
every inch of this quarter, where he and Marguerite had years ago lived.
Down the Rue St. Honore, he had reached the bottom of the interminably
long str