iles out."

He spoke with cold acerbity. How childishly foolish of Madeleine to try
and deceive him! But all women of the type to which she belonged make
foolish mysteries about nothing.

"The submarine _Neptune_?" As she stammered out the question which had
already been answered, there came over Madame Baudoin's face a look of
measureless terror. Twice her lips opened--and twice she closed them
again.

At last she uttered a few words--words of anguished protest and revolt.
"No, no," she cried, "that can't be--it's impossible!"

"Command yourself!" he said sternly. "Remember what would be thought by
anyone who saw you in this state."

But she went on looking at him with wild, terror-stricken eyes. "My poor
Claire!" she moaned. "My little sister Claire----"

All Jacques de Wissant's jealousy leapt into eager, quivering life. Then
he had been right after all? His wife loved Dupre. Her sister's
anguished sympathy had betrayed Claire's secret as nothing Claire
herself was ever likely to say or do could have done.

"You are a good sister," he said ironically, "to take Claire's distress
so much to heart. Identifying yourself as entirely as you seem to do
with her, I am surprised that you did not accompany her into Falaise: it
was most wrong of you to let her go alone."

"Claire is not in Falaise," muttered Madeleine. She was grasping the
back of one of the cane chairs with her hand as if glad of even that
slight support, staring at him with a dazed look of abject misery which
increased his anger, his disgust.

"Not in Falaise?" he echoed sharply. "Then where, in God's name, is
she?"

A most disagreeable possibility had flashed into his mind. Was it
conceivable that his wife had had herself rowed to the scene of the
disaster? If she had done that, if her sister had allowed her to go
alone, or accompanied maybe by one or other of the officers belonging to
the submarine flotilla, then he told himself with jealous rage that he
would find it very difficult ever to forgive Claire. There are things a
woman with any self-respect, especially a woman who is the mother of
daughters, refrains from doing.

"Well?" he said contemptuously. "Well, Madeleine? I am waiting to hear
the truth. I desire no explanations--no excuses. I cannot, however,
withhold myself from telling you that you ought to have accompanied your
sister, even if you found it impossible to control her."

"I was there yesterday," said Madeleine Baudoin, with