way
would be enormous. Indeed, it would matter nothing. Arnold and Minette.
They had fallen together and would lie together in one of the great
common graves in which the dead would be buried. It would be little
short of a mockery to have the burial service read over her, and had
Arnold been consulted he would have preferred to lie beside her to being
laid in a grave apart.

So after a pause of five minutes Cuthbert moved away without venturing a
single look back at the group huddled down by the wall, but walked away
feeling crushed and overwhelmed by the untimely fate that had befallen
two persons of whom he had seen so much during the past year, and
feeling as feeble as he did when he first arose from his bed in the
American ambulance.

Several times he had to pause and lean against the wall, and when he
had passed the barricade at the Place de la Concorde, towards which he
had almost instinctively made his way, he sat down on one of the
deserted seats in the Champs Elysees, and burst into tears. It had
hardly come upon him as a surprise, for he had felt that, conspicuous as
he had made himself, the chances of Arnold making his escape were small
indeed, especially as Minette would cling to the Commune until the very
end. Still it never struck him as being possible that he himself might
witness the end. He had thought that the same obscurity that hung over
the fate of most of the other leaders of the Commune would envelop that
of Arnold. He would have fallen, but how or when would never have been
known. He would simply have disappeared. Rumor would have mentioned his
name for a few days, the rumor that was already busy with the fate of
other leaders of the insurrection, and he had never dreamt that it would
be brought home to him in this fashion. After a time Cuthbert pulled
himself together, waited until a fiacre came along for on this side of
Paris things were gradually regaining their usual aspect and then drove
back to Passy.

"What is the matter, Cuthbert?" Mary exclaimed as she caught sight of
his face. "Are you ill? You look terribly pale and quite unlike
yourself. What has happened?"

"I have had a shock, Mary," he said, with a faint attempt at a smile, "a
very bad shock. Don't ask me about it just at present. Please get me
some brandy. I have never fainted in my life, but I feel very near it
just at present."

Mary hurried away to Madame Michaud, who now always discreetly withdrew
as soon as Cuthbert w