tell me which would demonstrate
that Caffie's assassin was not the man whom the law had arrested and
detained. The evening of the assassination she was in this same room,
lying on this same bed, before this same window, and after having read
all day, she reflected and dreamed about her book, while listlessly
watching the coming of twilight in the court, that already obscured
everything in its shadow. Mechanically she had fixed her eyes on the
window of Caffie's office opposite. Suddenly she saw a tall man, whom
she took for an upholsterer, approach the window, and try to draw the
curtains. Then Caffie rose, and taking the lamp, he came forward in
such a way that the light fell full on the face of this upholsterer. You
understand, do you not?"

"Yes," murmured Saniel.

"She saw him then plainly enough to remember him, and not to confound
him with another. Tall, with long hair, a curled blond beard, and
dressed like a gentleman, not like a poor man. The curtains were drawn.
It was fifteen or twenty minutes after five. And it was at this
same moment that Caffie was butchered by this false upholsterer, who
evidently had only drawn the curtains so that he might kill Caffie in
security, and not imagining that some one should see him doing a deed
that denounced him as the assassin as surely as if he had been surprised
with the knife in his hand. On reading the description of Florentin in
the newspapers when he was arrested, Madame Dammauville believed the
criminal was found--a tall man, with long hair and curled beard. There
are some points of resemblance, but in the portrait published in the
illustrated paper that she received, she did not recognize the man who
drew the curtains, and she is certain that the judge is deceived. You
see that Florentin is saved!"

BOOK 3.

CHAPTER XXIV. HEDGING

As he did not reply to this cry of triumph, she looked at him in
surprise saw his face, pale, agitated, under the shock evidently of a
violent emotion that she could not explain to herself.

"What is the matter?" she asked, with uneasiness.

"Nothing," he answered, almost brutally.

"You do not wish to weaken my hope?" she said, not imagining that he
could not think of this hope and of Florentin. This was a path to lead
him out of his confusion. In following it he would have time to recover
himself.

"It is true," he said.

"You do not think that what Madame Dammauville saw proves Florentin's
innocence?"

"Woul