flabby, blue-jowled heap of a man, all thick creases and bulges; and
his face had patches of blue and purple in its hollows. He was
ponderous, he was huge; and with it there was an aspect of horror, as
though all that flesh were diseased."

"I paused by his table and slowly he looked up to me. His features
labored with thought, and he recognized me."

"'Saval!' he ejaculated hoarsely. 'You--you want me?'"

"I sat down at his table. 'I haven't come to arrest you,' I told him.
'But you had better know that the authorities have decided to arrest
you.'"

"He gasped. 'For--for----'"

"'I don't know what for,' I told him. 'For whatever you have been
doing.'"

"He had to blink and swallow and wipe his brow before he mastered the
fact. His mind, like his body, was a shameful ruin. But the fact that
he was not to be arrested at the moment seemed to comfort him. He
leaned over the table to me."

"'My wife's here,' he said, in a raucous whisper."

"'Yes; she knows,' I answered."

"He frowned, and seemed perplexed. 'She'll make me shoot myself,' he
went on. 'I know what she means. I warn you, she'll make me do it.
Have a drink?'"

"He was horrible, an offence to the daylight. He bawled an order to
the Arab, and turned to me again."

"'That's what it'll come to,' he said. 'I warn you.'"

"He repeated the last phrase in whispers, staring at me heavily: 'I
warn you; I warn you.'"

"'Have you a pistol?' I asked him. Yes, Madame, I asked him that."

"He smiled at me. 'No, I haven't,' he said, still confidentially.
'You see how it is? I haven't even a pistol. But I know what she
means.'"

"I was in field uniform, and I unbuttoned my holster and laid the
revolver on the table before him. He looked at it with an empty
smile. 'It is loaded,' I said, and left him."

"But I wondered. It seemed to me that there was a tension in the
affairs of Bertin and his wife which could not endure, that the
moment was at hand when the breaking-point would be reached. And it
was this idea that carried me the same evening to visit Madame
Bertin. The night about me was still, yet overhead there was wind,
for great clouds marched in procession across the moon, trailing
their shadows over the sand. Bertin inhabited a little house at the
fringe of the village; it looked out at the emptiness of the desert.
I was yet ten paces from the door when it opened and Madame Bertin
came forth. She was wrapped in her bernouse, and she closed the door