y.

The girl stood with her hands loosely joined before her, and her thin
face vacant, staring, as though in a mood of deep thought, along the
bare passage. Suddenly she addressed the officer.

"How long shall I be with him," she inquired, in tones of an almost
arrogant composure, "before they cut his head off?"

The words, in their matter-of-fact directness, no less than the tone,
seemed to startle the officer.

"Ah, Mademoiselle!" he protested, as though at an indelicacy or an
accusation.

"How long?" repeated the girl.

"Kindly tell mademoiselle what she wishes to know," directed Rufin.

The officer hesitated. "It does not rest with me," he said
uncomfortably. "You see, there is a regular course in these matters,
a routine. I hope mademoiselle will have not less than ten minutes."

The girl looked at Rufin and made a face. It was as though she had
been overcharged in a shop; she invited him, it seemed, to take note
of a trivial imposture. Her manner and gesture had the repressed
power of under-expression. He nodded to her in entire comprehension.

"But," began the officer excitedly, "how can I----" Rufin turned on
him gravely, a somber, august figure of reproof.

"Sir," he said, "you are in the presence of a tragedy. I beg you to
be silent."

The officer made a hopeless gesture; the shadow of it fled
grotesquely up the walls.

A few moments later the summons came that took them along the passage
to an open door, giving on to a room brilliant with lights and
containing a number of people. At the farther end of it a table
against the wall had been converted into a sort of altar, with wan
candles alight upon it, and there was a robed priest among the
uniformed men. Those by the door parted to make way for them. Rufin
saw them salute him, and removed his hat.

Somebody was speaking. "Regret we cannot leave you alone, but----"

"It does not matter," said Rufin. The room was raw and aching with
light; the big electrics were pitiless. In the middle of it a man sat
on a chair and raised expectant eyes at his arrival. It was Giaconi,
the painter, the murderer. There was some disorder of his dress which
Rufin noted automatically, but it was not for some minutes that he
perceived its cause--the collar of his coat had been shorn away. The
man sat under all those fascinated eyes impatiently; his tired and
whimsical face was tense and drawn; he was plainly putting a strong
constraint upon himself. The great shoul