n to my hand. In the tempest of
her soul she instinctively clung to one whom she knew to be true. She
walked with me steadily across the great hall, and into the Diana
gallery, now dark and cold as a vault. She looked like a specter as
her white figure glided past the mirrors on the walls.

She continued to grasp my hands as a drowning man grasps his savior.
We were too far off from the place of combat to hear anything except
the dull shuffling of feet upon the floor. I had not the slightest
doubt that in five minutes, at most, Regnard would kill Gaston.

In less than five minutes the door of the yellow saloon opened, and a
flood of light poured into the great hall, vacant, dark and silent.
Regnard appeared on the threshold.

"Come, Madame," he cried in a loud and triumphant voice. "Come and
behold the man you claimed as husband just now!"

Through the open door we could see Gaston, lying huddled in a pool of
blood upon the floor of the little room. Blood, too, was on Regnard's
face, but he wiped it off with his handkerchief, and laughed to
himself.

I turned to where Francezka had sat, but she was gone. At the end of
the hall, I heard the great door clang. At once the thought of the
lake suggested itself to me and I ran out of doors. The way Francezka
usually took to the lake was by way of the Italian garden. I knew
this, but a strange confusion fell upon me when I found myself out of
doors, under the blue-black starlit sky. I could not recall the way to
the Italian garden--nor yet the lake. At last, it came to me. I saw,
afar, through the bare trees, the white statues gleaming, the black
cedars, the yew trees--black, too, in the white moonlight.

I ran toward this garden, with its pathway to the lake, and thought
every moment I should see before me Francezka's flying figure. She was
ever fleet of foot, and when I remembered this, the heart within me
died.

When I reached the statue of Petrarch under which the poor dog lay
buried, I stopped and searched the scene with a glance sharpened by
agony. The lake lay before me; I heard its voice in the night--that
strange voice to which I had often listened with Francezka. And then
from the lonely cedars on the bank, I saw Francezka emerge, and, at
the same moment, there was a sound of swift pursuing feet--Regnard,
too, had known where to seek her.

Francezka paused one moment on the brink of the lake, and turned her
head toward those steadily nearing footsteps. Then