nted down, lost, an object
of hatred and terror to Florence, whose eyes were now opened to the true
state of things, what plan could he have in mind except his invariable
plan of murder?

"Faster!" cried Don Luis. "We're making no headway. Go faster,
can't you?"

Florence murdered! Perhaps the crime was not yet accomplished. No, it
could not be! Killing takes time. It is preceded by words, by the offer
of a bargain, by threats, by entreaties, by a wholly unspeakable scene.
But the thing was being prepared, Florence was going to die!

Florence was going to die by the hand of the brute who loved her. For he
loved her: Don Luis had an intuition of that monstrous love; and he was
bound to believe that such a love could only end in torture and
bloodshed.

Sable ... Sille-le-Guillaume....

The earth sped beneath them. The trees and houses glided by like shadows.

And then Alencon.

It was hardly more than a quarter to two when they landed in a meadow
between the town and Damigni. Don Luis made inquiries. A number of motor
cars had passed along the road to Damigni, including a small limousine
driven by a gentleman who had turned down a crossroad. And this crossroad
led to the woods at the back of Langernault's estate, the Old Castle.

Don Luis's conviction was so firm that, after taking leave of Davanne, he
helped him to start on his homeward flight. He had no further need of
him. He needed nobody. The final duel was at hand.

He ran along, guided by the tracks of the tires in the dust, and followed
the crossroad. To his great surprise this road went nowhere near the wall
behind the barn from which he had jumped a few weeks before. After
clearing the woods, Don Luis came out into a large untilled space where
the road turned back toward the estate and ended at an old two-winged
gate protected with iron sheets and bars.

The limousine had gone in that way.

"And I must get in this way, too," thought Don Luis. "I must get in at
all costs and immediately, without wasting time in looking for an opening
or a handy tree."

Now the wall was thirteen feet high at this spot. Don Luis got in. How he
managed it, by what superhuman effort, he himself could not have said
after he had done it.

Somehow or other, by hanging on to invisible projections, by digging a
knife which he had borrowed from Davanne into the interstices between the
stones, he managed it.

And when he was on the other side he discovered the tracks of th