nd figure," he repeats again and again. "It
is your last, your only chance! Think of the faces you saw at the 'Loup
Noir.' Do none of them recall anything to you? You quarrelled with
Jehane in the garden about your brother. Then you went to your room. Oh,
what did you think in your room?"

"I thought of your niece," responds Arnaud wildly. "How very beautiful
she was, and what a model she would make. Then I prepared a blank
canvas for the morning, and went to bed. When I woke up the picture was
there."

"And you remember nothing more--nothing at all?" insists Jean Potin.
"You fell asleep at once? You heard no sound?"

Against the barred window of the cell the rain patters softly. A distant
clock booms out eleven strokes.

Something in the artist's brain seems to snap. He raises his head. He
slides from the bed. As in a trance he crosses the cell, seizes a piece
of charcoal, and feverishly works at the picture on the easel!

Not daring to speak, Jean Potin watches him. The figure behind the hands
grows and grows beneath Arnaud's fingers.

A woman's figure!

Then the face: a coarse, malignant face, distorted by evil passions.

"Ah!"

It is a cry of recognition from the breathless innkeeper. It breaks the
spell. The charcoal drops, and the prisoner, passing his hand across his
eyes, gazes bewildered at his own work.

"Who? What?"

"But I know her! It is the woman in whose room you slept! She was
staying at the 'Loup Noir' the very night before you arrived, and she
left that morning. She and her husband, Monsieur Guillaumet. But it is
incredible if _she_ should have----"

I will be short with you, gentlemen. Madame Guillaumet was traced to her
flat in Paris. Arnaud's Avocat confronted her with the now completed
picture. She was confounded--babbled like a mad woman--confessed!

A reprieve for further inquiry was granted by the State. Finally Arnaud
was cleared, and allowed to go free.

The motive for the murder? A woman's jealousy. Monsieur and Madame
Guillaumet had been married only ten months. Her age was forty-nine; his
twenty-seven. Every second of their married life was to her weighted
with intolerable suspicions; how soon would this young husband, so dear
to her, forsake her for another, now that his debts were paid? It preyed
upon her mind, distorting it, unbalancing it; each glance, each movement
of his she exaggerated into an intrigue.

On their way to Paris they stayed a few days at the "Loup Noi