feeling, the two women must separate. No paltering with this duty,
and no delay. A month of baby cries and baby touches might weaken the
real mother. It should be now. It should be to-day.

But first, a final word--a parting question. It was uttered by
Ermentrude.

"You will go back to France?"

"Yes. I can easily live there. And you, Ermentrude?"

"To New York. I shall never go far from him. But he and I will never
meet. My world will not be his world. I shall make my own place."

"As Ermentrude Taylor?"

"As Mrs. Ermentrude Taylor. I am a wife. I shall never forget that fact."

"And the child? Will you never come to see it?"

Ermentrude's head fell and she stood a long time without answering. Then
with a steady look she calmly said:

"I can think of but one contingency which might shake my resolution
to leave her yours without the least interruption from me. If
_he_--Antoinette, if he were left alone and childless, I might see
my duty differently from now. You must be prepared for that."

"Ermentrude, when you send me this little shoe--See, I will leave one on
and give you the other, I shall know that you are coming, or that you
want the child. My life is yours as I once promised, and do you think I
would hold back the child?"

And again their hands met as once before, in that strong clasp, which
means:

"Trust me to the death and beyond it."

* * * * *

With Antoinette it was to the death, as we have seen. Warned by
Ermentrude of the appalling results of their plan to bring father and
child together, and entreated to fly lest her story should imperil
the secret upon the preservation of which his very life now hung, she
answered to the call as she had promised, and thus acquitted her debt
though she failed to save him.

Of her previous act in disfiguring his photograph in her temporary
lodging-place, we shall never know the full story. The picture had been
hers for years, given her by Ermentrude on their parting, so that the
child should not be without some semblance of her father even if she
should not know him as such, and it was to secure this clue to their now
doubly dangerous secret that Madame Duclos ransacked her baggage previous
to her flight from the New York hotel. But whether its destruction in the
peculiar manner we know was the result of simple precaution, or of a
feeling of antagonism so strong against this destroyer of her beloved's
peace, that it had to