pon him. Peter Ruff shrank back.

"Madame," he murmured, "this cannot be."

Her lips twitched as though she would have smiled.

"What we have decided," she said, "we have decided. Nothing can alter
that--not even the will of Mr. Peter Ruff."

"I have been out of the world for four years," Peter Ruff protested. "I
have no longer ambitions, no longer any desire----"

"You lie!" the woman interrupted. "You lie, or you do yourself an
injustice! We gave you four years, and, looking into your face, I think
that it has been enough. I think that the weariness is there already. In
any case, the charge which I lay upon you in these, my last moments, is
one which you can escape by death only!"

A low murmur of voices from those others repeated her words.

"By death only!"

Peter Ruff opened his lips, but closed them again without speech. A wave
of emotion seemed passing through the room. Something strange was
happening. It was Death itself which had come amongst them.

* * * * *

A morning journalist wrote of the death of Madame eloquently and with
feeling. She had been a broadminded aristocrat, a woman of brilliant
intellect and great friendships, a woman of whose inner life during the
last ten or fifteen years little was known, yet who, in happier times,
might well have played a great part in the history of her country.

* * * * *

Peter Ruff drove back from the cemetery with the Marquis de Sogrange,
and for the first time since the death of Madame serious subjects were
spoken of.

"I have waited patiently," he declared, "but there are limits. I want my
wife."

Sogrange took him by the arm and led him into the library of the house
in the Rue de St. Quintaine. The six men who were already there waiting
rose to their feet.

"Gentlemen," the Marquis said, "is it your will that I should be
spokesman?"

There was a murmur of assent. Then Sogrange turned towards his
companion, and something new seemed to have crept into his manner--a
solemn, almost threatening note.

"Peter Ruff," he continued, "you have trifled with the one organisation
in this world which has never allowed itself to have liberties taken
with it or to be defied. Men who have done greater service than you have
died for the disobedience of a day. You have been treated leniently,
accordingly to the will of Madame. According to her will, and in
deference to the position which you must now