my quarters were with Mr. Murreyfield,
the local squire. It was there that I first met Miss Ena Garnier.

It may not seem proper at such a time and place as this that I should
describe that lady. And yet her personality is the very essence of my
case. Let me only say that I cannot believe that Nature ever put into
female form a more exquisite combination of beauty and intelligence. She
was twenty-five years of age, blonde and tall, with a peculiar delicacy
of features and of expression. I have read of people falling in love at
first sight, and had always looked upon it as an expression of the
novelist. And yet from the moment that I saw Ena Garnier life held for
me but the one ambition--that she should be mine. I had never dreamed
before of the possibilities of passion that were within me. I will not
enlarge upon the subject, but to make you understand my action--for I
wish you to comprehend it, however much you may condemn it--you must
realize that I was in the grip of a frantic elementary passion which
made, for a time, the world and all that was in it seem a small thing if
I could but gain the love of this one girl. And yet, in justice to
myself, I will say that there was always one thing which I placed above
her. That was my honour as a soldier and a gentleman. You will find it
hard to believe this when I tell you what occurred, and yet--though for
one moment I forgot myself--my whole legal offence consists in my
desperate endeavour to retrieve what I had done.

I soon found that the lady was not insensible to the advances which I
made to her. Her position in the household was a curious one. She had
come a year before from Montpellier, in the South of France, in answer to
an advertisement from the Murreyfields in order to teach French to their
three young children. She was, however, unpaid, so that she was rather a
friendly guest than an _employee_. She had always, as I gathered, been
fond of the English and desirous to live in England, but the outbreak of
the war had quickened her feelings into passionate attachment, for the
ruling emotion of her soul was her hatred of the Germans. Her
grandfather, as she told me, had been killed under very tragic
circumstances in the campaign of 1870, and her two brothers were both in
the French army. Her voice vibrated with passion when she spoke of the
infamies of Belgium, and more than once I have seen her kissing my sword
and my revolver because she hoped they