h and kin were
not all in the world; love of woman was not all; a chance for a home,
a wife, children, were not all; a name was not all. Raising my head, a
trifle faint with the struggle and the cost of the struggle, I saw the
distress in her eyes and strove to smile.

"There is every hope," I said, "save the hopes of youth--the hope of
a woman's love, and of that happiness which comes through love. I am a
man past thirty, madame--thirty-five, I believe my dossier makes it.
It has taken me fifteen years to bury my youth. Let us talk of
Mornac."

"Yes, we will talk of Mornac," she said, gently.

So with infinite pains I went back and traced for her the career of
Buckhurst, sparing her nothing; I led up to my own appearance on the
scene, reviewed briefly what we both knew, then disclosed to her in
its most trivial detail the conference between Buckhurst and myself in
which his cynical avowal was revealed in all its native hideousness.

She sat motionless, her face like cold marble, as I carefully gathered
the threads of the plot and gently twitched that one which galvanized
the mask of Mornac.

"Mornac!" she stammered, aghast.

I showed her why Buckhurst desired to come to Paradise; I showed her
why Mornac had initiated her into the mysteries of my dossier, taking
that infernal precaution, although he had every reason to believe he
had me practically in prison, with the keys in his own pocket.

"Had it not been for my comrade, Speed," I said, "I should be in one
of Mornac's fortress cells. He overshot the mark when he left us
together and stepped into his cabinet to spread my dossier before you.
He counted on an innocent man going through hell itself to prove his
innocence; he counted on me, and left Speed out of his calculations.
He had your testimony, he had my dossier, he had the order for my
arrest in his pocket.... And then I stepped out of sight! I, the
honest fool, with my knowledge of his infamy, of Buckhurst's
complicity and purposes--I was gone.

"And now mark the irony of the whole thing: he had, criminally,
destroyed the only bureau that could ever have caught me. But he did
his best during the few weeks that were left him before the battle of
Sedan. After that it was too late; it was too late when the first
Uhlan appeared before the gates of Paris. And now Mornac, shorn of
authority, is shut up in a city surrounded by a wall of German steel,
through which not one single living creature has penetrate