taken."

Hector became livid, and could not stifle a cry of horror. He
comprehended all now--he saw how it was that Bertha had been so
easily subdued, why she had refrained from speaking of Laurence,
her strange words, her calm confidence.

"Poison!" stammered he, confounded.

"Yes, poison."

"You have not used it?"

She fixed a hard, stern look upon him--the look which had subdued
his will, against which he had struggled in vain--and in a calm
voice, emphasizing each word, answered:

"I have used it."

The count was, indeed, a dangerous man, unscrupulous, not recoiling
from any wickedness when his passions were to be indulged, capable
of everything; but this horrible crime awoke in him all that remained
of honest energy.

"Well," he cried, in disgust, "you will not use it again!"

He hastened toward the door, shuddering; she stopped him.

"Reflect before you act," said she, coldly. "I will betray the
fact of your relations with me; who will then believe that you are
not my accomplice?"

He saw the force of this terrible menace, coming from Bertha.

"Come," said she, ironically, "speak--betray me if you choose.
Whatever happens, for happiness or misery, we shall no longer be
separated; our destinies will be the same."

Hector fell heavily into a chair, more overwhelmed than if he had
been struck with a hammer. He held his bursting forehead between
his hands; he saw himself shut up in an infernal circle, without
outlet.

"I am lost!" he stammered, without knowing what he said, "I am lost!"

He was to be pitied; his face was terribly haggard, great drops of
perspiration stood at the roots of his hair, his eyes wandered as
if he were insane. Bertha shook him rudely by the arm, for his
cowardice exasperated her.

"You are afraid," she said. "You are trembling! Lost? You would
not say so, if you loved me as I do you. Will you be lost because
I am to be your wife, because we shall be free to love in the face
of all the world? Lost! Then you have no idea of what I have
endured? You don't know, then, that I am tired of suffering,
fearing, feigning."

"Such a crime!"

She burst out with a laugh that made him shudder.

"You ought to have said so," said she, with a look full of contempt,
"the day you won me from Sauvresy--the day that you stole the wife
of this friend who saved your life. Do you think that was a less
horrid crime? You knew as well as I did how much my husband loved
me, and that he would