Armand had come, trying to fool himself into the belief
that the love of "little mother" could be deceived into blindness
against his own crime. He had tried to draw a veil before those eyes
which he had scarcely dared encounter, but he knew that that veil
must lift one day, and then a curse would send him forth, outlawed and
homeless, a wanderer on the face of the earth.

Soon as the little cortege wended its way northwards it filed out
beneath the walls of the Temple prison; there was the main gate with its
sentry standing at attention, there the archway with the guichet of the
concierge, and beyond it the paved courtyard. Armand closed his eyes
deliberately; he could not bear to look.

No wonder that he shivered and tried to draw his cloak closer around
him. Every stone, every street corner was full of memories. The chill
that struck to the very marrow of his bones came from no outward cause;
it was the very hand of remorse that, as it passed over him, froze the
blood in his veins and made the rattle of those wheels behind him sound
like a hellish knell.

At last the more closely populated quarters of the city were left
behind. On ahead the first section of the guard had turned into the Rue
St. Anne. The houses became more sparse, intersected by narrow pieces of
terrains vagues, or small weed-covered bits of kitchen garden.

Then a halt was called.

It was quite light now. As light as it would ever be beneath this leaden
sky. Rain and snow still fell in gusts, driven by the blast.

Some one ordered Armand to dismount. It was probably Chauvelin. He did
as he was told, and a trooper led him to the door of an irregular brick
building that stood isolated on the right, extended on either side by
a low wall, and surrounded by a patch of uncultivated land, which now
looked like a sea of mud.

On ahead was the line of fortifications dimly outlined against the grey
of the sky, and in between brown, sodden earth, with here and there
a detached house, a cabbage patch, a couple of windmills deserted and
desolate.

The loneliness of an unpopulated outlying quarter of the great mother
city, a useless limb of her active body, an ostracised member of her
vast family.

Mechanically Armand had followed the soldier to the door of the
building. Here Chauvelin was standing, and bade him follow. A smell of
hot coffee hung in the dark narrow passage in front. Chauvelin led the
way to a room on the left.

Still that smell of h