was she pursuing?
These were obscure problems which he could no longer hope to solve.
Henceforth each of them must go his own way in life and each of them
could only remember the other with feelings of anger and spite.

"No!" he said to himself, as she took her place in the limousine. "No!
The separation shall not take place like that. The words that have to be
spoken between us shall be spoken; and, whether she wishes or not, I will
tear the veil that hides her."

* * * * *

The journey did not take long. At Alencon Don Luis entered Florence in
the visitors' book under the first name that occurred to him and left her
to herself. An hour later he came and knocked at her door.

This time again he had not the courage at once to ask her the question
which he had made up his mind to put to her. Besides, there were other
points which he wished to clear up.

"Florence," he said, "before I hand over that man, I should like to know
what he was to you."

"A friend, an unhappy friend, for whom I felt pity," she declared. "I
find it difficult to-day to understand my compassion for such a monster.
But, some years ago, when I first met him, I became attached to him
because of his wretchedness, his physical weakness, and all the symptoms
of death which he bore upon him even then. He had the opportunity of
doing me a few services; and, though he led a hidden life, which worried
me in certain respects, he gradually and without my knowing it acquired a
considerable influence over me.

"I believed in his insight, in his will, in his absolute devotion; and,
when the Mornington case started, it was he, as I now realize, who guided
my actions and, later, those of Gaston Sauverand. It was he who compelled
me to practise lying and deceit, persuading me that he was working for
Marie Fauville's safety. It was he who inspired us with such suspicion of
yourself and who taught us to be so silent, where he and his affairs were
concerned, that Gaston Sauverand did not even dare mention him in his
interview with you.

"I don't know how I can have been so blind. But it was so. Nothing opened
my eyes. Nothing made me suspect for a moment that harmless, ailing
creature, who spent half his life in hospitals or nursing-homes, who
underwent every possible sort of operation, and who, if he did sometimes
speak to me of his love, must have known that he could not hope to--"

Florence did not finish her sentence. Her ey