d like some dumb
creature. Hagon, transfixed, stood with his eyes riveted upon Bernadine.
His face was distorted with passion; he seemed like a man beside himself
with fury. De Grost came slowly forward into the middle of the room.

"Count von Hern," he said, "I think that you had better leave."

The woman found words.

"Not yet!" she cried. "Not yet! Paul, listen to me. This man has told me
a terrible thing."

The breath seemed to come through Hagon's teeth like a hiss.

"He has told you!"

"Listen to me!" she continued. "It is the truth which you must tell now.
He says that you--you are Father Paul!"

Hagon did not hesitate.

"It is true," he admitted.

Then there was a silence--short, but tragical. Hagon seemed suddenly to
have collapsed. He was like a man who has just had a stroke. He stood
muttering to himself.

"It is the end--this--the end!" he said, in a low tone. "It was for your
sake, Sophia! I came to you poor, and you would have nothing to say to
me. My love for you burned in my veins like fever. It was for you I did
it--for your sake I sold my honour, the love of my country, the freedom
of my brothers. For your sake I risked an awful death. For your sake I
have lived like a hunted man, with the cry of the wolves always in my
ears, and the fear of death and of eternal torture with me day by day.
Have pity on me!"

She was unmoved; her face had lost all expression. No one noticed in
that rapt moment that Bernadine had crept from the room.

"It was you," she cried, "who killed my father and sent my brothers into
exile!"

"God help me!" he moaned.

She turned to de Grost.

"Take him away with you, please," she said. "I have finished with him!"

"Sophia!" he pleaded.

She leaned across the table and struck him heavily upon the cheek.

"If you stay here," she muttered, "I shall kill you myself!"

* * * * *

That night the body of an unknown foreigner was found in the attic of a
cheap lodging-house in Soho. The discovery itself and the verdict at the
inquest occupied only a few lines in the morning newspapers. Those few
lines were the epitaph of one who was very nearly a Rienzi. The greater
part of his papers de Grost mercifully destroyed, but one in particular
he preserved. Within a week the much-delayed treaty was signed at Paris,
London and St. Petersburg.

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST SHOT

De Grost and his wife were dining together at the corner t