ed on:

"Yes, let me know the truth--that will be nothing now. Besides, I have
guessed it. Only I must know one way or the other. All these years I
have lived in doubt. You see what it means to me. You must understand
what is due me after all our life together. Madeleine, did you lie to
me?"

"No."

"Listen," he said, desperately. "You never asked me the same
question--why, I never understood--but if you had questioned me I could
not have answered truthfully what you did. There, you see, there is no
longer the slightest reason why you should not speak the truth."

She half closed her eyes--wearily.

"I have told--the truth."

"Ah, I can't believe it," he cried, carried away. "Oh, cursed day when I
told you what I did. It's that which tortures me. You adore me--you
don't wish to hurt me, to leave a wound behind, but I swear to you if
you told me the truth I should feel a great weight taken from my heart,
a weight that has been here all these years. I should know that every
corner of your soul had been shown to me, nothing withheld. I should
know absolutely, Madeleine, believe me, when I tell you this, when I
tell you I must know. Every day of my life I have paid the penalty, I
have suffered the doubts of the damned, I have never known an hour's
peace! I beg you, I implore you, only let me know the truth; the
truth--I must know the truth!"

He stopped suddenly, trembling all over, and held out his hands to her,
his face lashed with suffering.

"I have not lied," she said slowly, after a long study. She raised her
eyes, feebly made the sign of the cross, and whispered, "I swear it."

Then he no longer held in his tears. He dropped his head, and his body
shook with sobs, while from time to time he repeated, "Thank God, thank
God."

IV

The next day Madeleine Conti had a sudden turn for the worse, which
surprised the attendants. Doctor Kimball, the American, doctor, and Pere
Francois, who had administered the last rites, were walking together in
the little formal garden, where the sun flung short, brilliant shadows
of scattered foliage about them.

"She was an extraordinary artist and her life was more extraordinary,"
said Dr. Kimball. "I heard her debut at the Opera Comique. For ten years
her name was the gossip of all Europe. Then all at once she meets a man
whom no one knows, falls in love, and is transformed. These women are
really extraordinary examples of hysteria. Each time I know one it makes