clothes. They examined everything,
they wrote rapidly on big sheets of stamped paper; their chief took the
first deposition of Regina, and of the three men, and of the surgeon. At
dawn a man came with a rough pine coffin. Officials came and went, and
were gravely busy. One man spoke of coffee when it was day, and went and
made some in the little kitchen, for the two young women who cooked and
did the work of the house did not sleep there, and would not come till
past seven o'clock.

During the long hours, when Regina and Marcello were not wanted, they
were together in the sitting-room downstairs. Regina told Marcello in
detail everything she knew about the events of the night, and much which
she had found out earlier about Settimia but had never told him. Kalmon
came in from time to time and told them what was going on, and that
Corbario was still alive; but they saw no more of Ercole. He had made
his first deposition, to the effect that he had been set to watch the
house, that the murderer had jumped from an upper window, and that the
dog had pulled him down. The officials looked nervously at the dog,
produced by Ercole in evidence, and were glad when the beast was out of
their sight. There were dark stains about the bristles on his jaws, and
his eyes were bloodshot; but Ercole laid one hand on his uncouth head,
and he was very quiet, and did not even snarl at the policemen.

Regina and Marcello sat side by side, talking in a low voice, and
looking at each other now and then. The little house in which they had
been happy was turned to a place of death and horror, and both knew that
some change was coming to themselves.

"You cannot live here any more," Marcello said at dawn, "not even till
to-night."

"Where could I go?" Regina asked. "Why should I not stay here? Do you
think I am afraid of the dead woman?"

"No," Marcello answered, "but you cannot stay here."

He guessed what talking and gossiping there would be when the newspapers
told what had happened in the little house, how the reporters would
hang about the street for a week to come, and how fashionable people
would go out of their way to see the place where a murder had been
committed by such a well-known person as Corbario, and where he had been
taken almost in the very act, and himself nearly killed. Besides all
that, there would be the public curiosity about Regina, who had been so
intimately concerned in a part of the tragedy, and whose name was
ever