ress.

And it was a strange and sinister phase of Paris that Neeland now
gazed upon through the misty stillness of early morning. For there was
something terrible in the sudden quiet, where the swift and shadowy
fury of earliest dawn had passed: and the wrecked buildings sagged
like corpses, stark and disembowelled, spilling out their dead
intestines indecently under the whitening sky.

Save for the echoes of distant shots, no louder than the breaking of a
splinter--save for the deadened stamp and stir of horses, a low-voiced
order, the fainter clash of spurs and scabbards--an intense stillness
brooded now over the city, ominously prophetic of what fateful
awakening the coming sunrise threatened for the sleeping capital.

Neeland turned and looked at Ilse Dumont. She stood motionless on the
sidewalk, in the clear, colourless light, staring fixedly across the
street at the debris of the gaping, shattered Cafe des Bulgars. Her
evening gown hung in filmy tinted shreds; her thick, dark hair in
lustrous disorder shadowed her white shoulders; a streak of dry blood
striped one delicate bare arm.

To see her standing there on the sidewalk in the full, unshadowed
morning light, silent, dishevelled, scarcely clothed, seemed to him
part of the ghastly unreality of this sombre and menacing vision, from
which he ought to rouse himself.

She turned her head slowly; her haggard eyes met his without
expression; and he found his tongue with the effort of a man who
strives for utterance through a threatening dream:

"We can't stay here," he said. The sound of his own voice steadied and
cleared his senses. He glanced down at his own attire, blood-stained,
and ragged; felt for the loose end of his collar, rebuttoned it, and
knotted the draggled white tie with the unconscious indifference of
habit.

"What a nightmare!" he muttered to himself. "The world has been turned
upside down over night." He looked up at her: "We can't stay here," he
repeated. "Where do you live?"

She did not appear to hear him. She had already started to move toward
the rue Vilna, where the troopers barring that street still sat their
restive horses. They were watching her and her dishevelled companion
with the sophisticated amusement of men who, by clean daylight,
encounter fagged-out revellers of a riotous night.

Neeland spoke to her again, then followed her and took her arm.

"Where are you going?" he repeated, uneasily.

"I shall give myself up," s