"Kaiserina!" he said in a commanding voice, without the least softening with that southern suavity, "for how much do you want to sell me secretly, your husband's invention?"

The altered voice appeared not at all strange, but the words were so unexpected that she merely stared in bewilderment while he had even more deliberately to repeat them. Deeply frightened by this mystery which in vain she tried to solve, she forced a laugh.

"Oh, it is no jest—I am one of the most serious of men," proceeded Cantagnac, "as becomes one of the busiest."

She looked at him like a fawn, which, having never seen a human being, is suddenly peered upon in the lair by the hunter.

"You want to know who I am, speaking to you in this style? See my card on the table there—it says I am Cantagnac, the agent, modest but passing for rather subtle, of a private and limited company recently established with a cash capital fully paid up of several millions of fredericks—for, to tell the plain facts to you—the obtaining for its profit the ideas, inventions and discoveries of others. In short, we, who used to despise mental fruits, see that it is the most profitable of trades to work genius. As soon as we see, learn, or even scent that an important thing is being produced anywhere in the world, we hurry to the spot and by one means or another—money, cunning, persuasion, main force, if needs must, we make ourselves master of what we must have if we mean to be the world's rulers. With a European war impending, even a lady will see at once of what value an invention is, like M. Clemenceau's."

"In plain language, you are proposing to me an infamous deed!" she exclaimed with scathing irony which failed to scare the other.

"I am proposing a matter of business. Where are you going?"

"Straight to my husband—whose confidence you have imposed on by some deception"

"Dear madame, do not do what you would eternally deplore," said Cantagnac quietly, and motioning with his broad hand for her to be seated again. "I deceived your husband with a bit of character acting which you would, I think, have applauded, as you were once on the stage—the music hall stage, at least."

She sat down, as if this allusion had stunned her.

"His secret is indispensable to my company and I was given instructions to try to obtain it, by surprise and for nothing, if possible. Without it, many another purchase of ours made at great expense, would become utterly useless. From an incomplete acquaintance with your husband, I feared I could do nothing with him; from a study of him here, at a later period, I doubted still more; and, having spoken with him, I am sure."

A previous acquaintance with Clemenceau? It was a ray of light, but still Cesarine, who did not cease to stare at him, failed to identify him with a figure in her past. Was this only a new phase of a Proteus?

"Clemenceau is no longer the frank and enthusiastic student but a man of talent and feeling who has found his true course. In what concerns the revelation he has had from science, he is reserved and circumspect. Happily, man that is borne of woman, however great, if a simpleton and an idealist, almost always is the prey of the sex in one form or another. When they escape feminine influence, they are impregnable, and strong measures must be employed."

"Strong measures," repeated Cesarine, shuddering at the icy, passionless tone like a lecturer's.

"They must be blotted off the book of life—and it is always painful to have to proceed to such extremities. It is frequent, very—and ninety-nine times in the hundred, we run up against the woman for whom a great magistrate advised the search whenever a crime is perpetrated."

"It would appear that you expect to induce me to commit that crime!" sneered the woman, pale but rebellious.

"We have no need to induce you, dear madame, for we can constrain you."

"Constrain me!" repeated the woman savagely and tossing her head with pride. "If you really knew my nature, you would not say that. You might tell me how?"

"Really know you? you shall judge for yourself. In your marriage certificate, you are described as of the Vieradlers, but your eagle is not the German one—it is the Polish. The women of your race are distinguished for beauty, when young, and freedom in love at all times. Your grandma has a volumnious chronicle of scandal all to herself, but her glory is thrown into the shade by the peculiar celebrity enjoyed rather briefly by her favorite daughter, La Belle Iza, that one of the Sirens of Paris who has, under the present Empire, lured the most men to wreck. This was your aunt. Her sister, your mother, quite as beautiful, was rescued at an early hour from her mother's manoevres to 'place' her, as she called it, and for this loss, the indignant old lady vowed a kind of unnatural vengeance, to be visited on the child of her who had offended her by remaining in the path of virtue. This child is the woman before me. Oh, it is useless to look at me like that!" he grimly said, with the perplexed air of a man with no ear for music who listens to a music-box delighting others. "Pure wasted labor! The old lady, who had fallen from her high estate where Iza had lifted her, and was ordered out of the capital for extorting hush-money upon her daughter's stock of love-letters, the old lady became a queen—a queen of the disreputable classes. In Munich, sleepy old town where superstitions linger and the women are as besotted with ignorance as the men with beer, she ruled the beggars and vagabonds. It was there that fate led you and you fell under her hand. She pretended to befriend you, for even so young, you promised to have power by your charms, renewing those she had never forgotten in her lost Iza. No one consulted the Almanack de Gotha when you were launched on an admiring society as one of the Vieradlers. You soon won a great reputation for freshness of wit and coquetry in all South Germany. In plain words, you could not see a man come into the drawing-room without wishing to make him fall in love with you. We want to monopolize genius—you to monopolize the love of man. You have the mania of loving, more common than it is suspected, especially by those who would have us believe that good society is a fold where snowy lambs are led about from the cradle to the butcher's shambles, by pastors carrying crooks decked with sky blue ribbons. The feeling is a craving in you—an involuntary and invincible instinct which was to have its inevitable end. You turned from a man who sincerely loved you to make a conquest of another whose heart was engaged."

"Stop!" interrupted Cesarine, triumphantly for she had detected genuine feeling the last tone used by the living enigma. "I know you now! you are the man whom you say really loved me. Down with the masks! You are—"

"Not so loud!"

"You are Major von Sendlingen!"

"Say 'Colonel' and you will be exact. Yes; I am the lover whom you cast off in favor of the student Ruprecht, as this Clemenceau was called when he pottered about Europe, sketching ruined doorways and broken windows and dreamed of architectural structures. A man whom destiny had chosen to be the greatest demolisher of the age! what sarcasm!"

"Well, you should be the last to complain! Was it like devotion to me that you should try to abduct La Belle Stamboulane in the public street?

"To remove her from your path! She was your rival in the music hall! Love her, love a Jewess? You do not understand men—you fancy they are put here for your pleasure, safeguard and redemption. An error! We are neither your joy or your punishment. Let that pass. You married the student Ruprecht who turned out to be your cousin Felix Clemenceau. For a time you played the part of the idolizing young wife admirably. You never reproached his father's head for the murder of your aunt and he said never a word about the old beggar-sovereign Baboushka. In your gladness at having stolen the man away from Fraulein Daniels, I believe you imagined that it was love you felt. Not a bit of it! Love is the sun of the soul—all light, heat, motion and creativeness! there are no more two loves than two suns. There may be two or many passions, but not two loves. If a man loved twice, it would not be love!"

The hard man spoke so tenderly that his hearer dared not scoff.

"He ran through your witchery after a while, but he built his hopes upon maternity. You had a child but you connived at its death, if you did not deal the stroke."

How accurately Sendlingen had measured this woman! Another would have cried out against him at this accusation—or burst into tears and so disarmed a less adamantine man. She did not blanch; she did not lift her hand to cover her unaltered features, but listened as idly as she would to the last plaint of the fool who might blown out his brains at her feet. The false Cantagnac pursued in his natural voice, rancid and imperious, rolling out the gutturals like a heavy wagon thundering over an old road.

"It follows, madame, that if you run to your husband at a faster gait than you took to run away with the Baron of Linden, to inform him of my proposition, I will tell him what you hear—I will accuse you of infanticide, of unfaithfulness—"

"He knows that!" ejaculated the woman with irony and in defiance. "Ask him, if you do not believe."

"Impossible."

"He would not say a word to anybody, and I would not have confessed only I was driven to it."

"And he forgave you?"

"All!"

"He is very grand; and few men of my acquaintance would not at least have caned you smartly. However, it was not long after the 'removal' of your child, to put it mildly, that you threw yourself into the swim of distractions, such as were to be had hereabouts. The old marchioness' circle soon surrounded you; she was one of my company's instruments, and from that time we counted on you as a coadjutrix some day."

"On me!"

"Precisely! to whom should we look for aid and complicity in our concealed and wary work but to the embodiment of permanent and domestic corruption? You are merely an impulse—we are a policy, and you will be our bondwoman. Ah, we are merely men—not fools, scoundrels or gods like your husband, for only such would tolerate depravity like yours."

"He is like a god," said Cesarine, trembling, in a low, hushed voice. "When he speaks, it seems to me that it is what people call conscience."

"How long is it since you acknowledged this superiority?" sneered the sham Marseillais.

"Too short a while, alas! some few minutes," sighed she.

"Well, granting he is at least a demi-god, he is a power which we have an interest in destroying. Hercules became a nuisance to neglectful stable-keepers, and like conservative institutions. Let us have done with him. But, first, the final training of yourself. I repeat that the marchioness' house was the rendezvous at the gates of Paris, where we assembled our bearers of intelligence. Under cover of chit-chat and vocal-waltzes, we heard reports and issued orders. It was necessary to link you to us and we employed our foremost captivator, the dandy of two countries, the international Lothario, the Viscount-baron Gratian von Linden-hohen-Linden-cum de Terremonde. Luckily, too, he had been at the same period as myself, smitten with your vernal charms, and he entered upon his amorous mission with gusto. You believed him very wealthy, but let me tell you that the cash he really had under hand was our petty expense fund. Judge by that what a capital we control!" exclaimed Von Sendlingen proudly. "Our poor Gratian the double dealer, seemed not to be loved by the gods any more truly than by his goddess here present, for she let him, unassisted, be thrust down, on falling through a broken bridge, into the mire of a rivulet visible from your window. There he breathed his last. Fit death for a traitor! For our corporation, the untimely, unmanageable passion of this athletic fop might have had grave consequences, and for you. We did not find the money on his person only a pocketbook stuffed with rubbish, as if he were the victim of some gross deception. But, have no fear, Madame, we are not going to claim the sum from you, we prefer to let you regard it as a payment on account. We intend you no mischief, and we intended you none, then; we might have stopped your flight—that is, I might have done so, but I only threw myself across your path after you ran on, to stay your husband from pursuing you."

"You were there?" she stammered, more and more frightened at the vastness of the serpent which involved her with its coils, and which was so careless about the loss of its golden scales.

"Enough! all is well that ends well! You will serve us?"

"But I have repented!"

"Nonsense! you returned home because your husband was suddenly enriched above your dreams. Your repentance was simply a prompting of moral hygiene for you to take rest before a new and less unlucky flight. You had the instinctive warning that to the greatly successful inventor, the modern king or knowing man—for civilization has come round the circle to the point where savagery commenced and the wise man rules—to the wizard, power, riches, beauty, all gravitate. Your husband would be courted; duchesses would sue him to place their husbands or gallants on the board of his company—the dark-eyed charmer whom you ousted in the Munich music hall and whom you foresaw to be your eternal rival, might meet him again. With you beside him, she might be repulsed—with you distant, he would surrender at discretion. What a triumph for your self-conceit and banquet for your senses to make your husband love you even more than when he was the suitor! Look out! in battling with your husband you say you fight Conscience; with Mademoiselle Daniels, with whom I have had twenty minutes' pleasant conversation, enlightening him, you would conflict with Virtue. Tell your husband that the money you offered to help him, came out of our bank, and he will not forgive you or tolerate you this time. No, for his silence would no longer be loftiness of soul, but complicity of which I do not think him capable," he grudgingly said. "He would hand you over to the police, and believe me, the Emperor Napoleon, having a mania on the subject of artillery, would personally instruct his procureur to draw up an indictment against you which would not miss fire. And were you to escape in France, we should have that abstracted money's worth from you elsewhere. Now, dear lady, for how much will you sell us the secret of M. Clemenceau?"

The woman bowed her head, like one imprisoned in a sand drift, not to be crossed in any direction, but closing in and weighing down. She was in a pitfall, overpowered like Gratian had been, subjugated, soon to be put to the yoke and compelled to draw steadily the harrow of transcendental politics. Her caprices, faults, fancies, duplicities, wiles, caresses, impudence, conquests and delights were but straws out of which some great diplomatist would draw supplies for his cattle. It was humiliating to the superb creature, but logical. She gnashed her teeth, but she was sure that her cajolery—even her tears would be thrown away on this soldier-spy whom once she had jilted, and who at present surfeited himself with her defeat.

"It is a crime," she moaned, "a dastardly crime that you require me to do."

"Not your first! You robbed us for your own private ends—we want you to rob another for ours! you must not always be selfish."

'But I had really repented—"

"Pooh! you may repent of this fresh misdeed while you are about penance. I have no objections to you becoming a good wife! it will be a novel sensation, and of nothing are you more fond! Suppose you convince your husband that it is wicked to kill his fellow-men by the myriad—that love of woman is better than glory—decide him to go into a cottage by the Mediterranean with you, and—sell us the invention. We could put it to a righteous end; clear Africa of cannibals, that the merchants' stores, and farms to raise produce to fill them, should replace cane-huts. But I doubt you will succeed!"

"Never!" she exclaimed, afraid that her hopelessness would injure her, for she would be the creditor of this remorseless combination without any prospect of repaying them. But all resistance was useless, she was convinced; she had to submit or she would be expunged from life. She who had fancied herself so powerful was but the lowly, abject subaltern at the beck of a preponderating power of which she understood no more the details than the aim and principle.

"There is always a second course," observed Von Sendlingen slowly. "That weak, inexperienced, young Italian, who loves you passionately."

"Antonino?"

"Antonino, yes; he carries the key to that coffer, and the key, too, of the private cipher in which the inventor records his discoveries."

Shrinking away aghast, her blanched countenance expressed her wonder at this preternatural knowledge. These master-spies knew everything, even under this roof, better than the wife! This grim giant carried on an abominable craft with thorough insight. That she could never emulate, for completeness was not her forte. Oh, had she but been a virtuous woman—an honorable wife, he had not dared assume to govern her! but when of a girl's age, she had acted like a woman; when a wife she had acted like the dissolute and unwived; when a mother, she had disembarrassed herself of the token of her glory of maternity. She was not fit to be anything but the instrument of such universal conspirators. She whom the viscount had playfully called "Donna Juana!" had met the Statue of the Commander at last, and once grasped, she would no more be free.

"I shall report to our committee that we have made our agreement," he said calmly and then, as he proceeded toward the door with the jolly swagger of the Marseillais transforming his stalwart and rigid frame, he added in the southern bland tone, "Delighted to see you again, dear Madame Clemenceau!"

She did not hear him, for she had sunk too deeply within the abyss. She regretted she had come back. It is true that the company which he represented so terrifyingly, might have pursued her and pestered her for their money, but she had the gifts that would arouse defenders for her in any quarter of the globe.

Had she not one ally? certainly no friend! and yet, if Clemenceau would only help her a little, she might cope with the arch-intriguer. If, indeed, Felix did not save her, she would be lost. It was a dreadful game, but glorious to win it, and she would be another and worthy woman if she came out unwounded. In her distress, she would have had recourse to the Jew and have utilized Rebecca though her rival, too! Besides, there was Antonino, so passionate as to rush blindly, dagger in hand, on even a Von Sendlingen.

"Come, come, cheer up," she said to herself, "there is a chance or two yet. If only I could get over this crisis, I will reform and sincerely resolve not to do a single act for which to reproach myself!"



CHAPTER XVIII.

A BITTER PARTING.

With a somewhat less burdened mind, Cesarine was still pondering when she saw Antonino, who had opened the door but perceived her, about to withdraw without notifying her of his presence. It was the act of a devotee who feared to pray in the chapel, when the priestess stood by the saint's image.

"Do not go," she exclaimed with vehemence. "Come here after closing the door tightly, for I want you to enter into a little plot with me."

She had regained her smiling visage and her sweet voice.

"Would you do it?"

"It depends upon who the object is," he said tremulously.

"It is against my husband," she replied with her smile more bright and her tone more merry.

"I forewarn you, madame, that I should turn informer," he answered in the same light key, but forced.

"That would be very bad for him for I am conspiring for his benefit."

"In that case, madame, I am entirely your man."

"Are you able to keep a secret?" she asked with gravity.

"I think so."

They had withdrawn into the window recess, and could see the gardens, as they conversed. The light fell on her through the Valenciennes curtain and at her back was a sombre tapestry. Her late trial gave her an exhausted air which seemed the additional gloss with which melancholy makes a woman more fascinating in the sentimental eyes of youth.

"I dare say you can keep your own," she pointedly said.

"Not so well, I fear, as another's."

"You must give me your word of honor that if my plot does not please you, nobody shall be told?"

"I give you my promise," he said freely, just as he would have given her anything she asked for.

He had debated with his passion, uttered every reason of others and all he could devise, overwhelmed himself with good advice and created a Chinese Wall of obstacles, but he heard himself murmuring: "I love her!" The only way, he feared, to put an end to his wicked craze was to put an end to his life—an irreputable argument, but to be used moderately. She allowed him to quiver under her lingering gaze, and finally said:

"The fact is, I do not like the idea of M. Clemenceau selling this house. It would be a greater grief than he believes now. He has his dearest memories springing here. Besides, he could not work in peace in town. Fortunately, my uncle has provided me with the means to help him. I want to lend him the sum required, but I fear that he would accept nothing from me."

"He is a very proud man," observed the Italian, courteously, for, while he worshiped the speaker, he knew that she was not morally without blemishes.

Not because her affection for him was a proof of that delinquency, for love overlooked that and gave it another name, but because he believed Clemenceau, and the woman, while no less alluring, was terrifying as well.

"It is an excess of very cruel justice!" said she with a strange warmth. "The greatest punishment on a wrongdoer is to refuse her, when repentant, the joy of doing a kindness. You need not pretend surprise, for I have done harm. I did not forsee what would be thought of my hasty conduct, and even if I were wicked; can you expect a woman to have the loftiness of genius like him, and the force for resisting temptation like you?"

"Like me!" ejaculated Antonino, starting.

"Yes; can you deny that you have had to wrestle and are wrestling now with yourself most strenuously?"

He averted his eyes and made no reply.

"Child that you are," she resumed. "You were right when you just now said that you could keep the secret of others better than your own. Can the eyes of an honest youth like you deceive those of a wayward woman like me? I thank you for the effort you have made—and the silence your lips have preserved. It matters not. I am glad that after doing the act of reparation proposed, I shall have the means to go away, literally, for good this time. It is time I went."

He lifted his hand as if to detain her, but let it fall quickly.

After all, if she departed forever without speaking out the secret of those two hearts, what harm would be done. Who had the right to prevent the susceptible Italian feeling the first impressions of the gentler sex and owing them to Cesarine? He could but be thankful that he saw only the prologue to "the great dreadful tragedy of Woman." He might blame himself for cherishing the memory of the false wife, but he could not annul that early sensation. Was it her fault, brought to France at the sequel of a romantic adventure, if she met him, a castaway, and disturbed his youth and innocence? There had not seemed any evil intention in speech or behavior toward him, and he himself might be as proud as she was of the pure and respectful sentiment which should have contributed toward her amelioration. In this case, he—ignorant of the counter-attraction of the Viscount de Terremonde—imagined that she had struggled also against the pressure of nature and the sin was no more when she triumphed.

"Well, listen to the secret which we can discuss," said she. "I wish to be associated with you in a good action, which, I hope, will lead to many another, if it is the first. One of these days, when you learn the story of my life, you will see there was a little good in it to shine on the dark background. Are you not willing to help me increase it? In this case, that good and honorable man will profit."

Antonino listened spellbound, he could have been ordered up to their own terrible cannon's mouth by that resistless voice.

"Let me live one day in your youth, illusions and unstained conscience," she implored. "Well, here in this little pocketbook are letters of credit for two hundred thousand francs. It is all I have—take it."

"What am I to do with it?" said Antonino.

"Put it away somewhere out of my reach to retake it. I know myself and that, if I have a good thought one day, I might entertain the reverse on the next. If I broke into the money, I could not replace the sum extracted, and, another thing, I cannot make the use of it I intended. Leave me to win from my husband the acceptance of the help I wish to give him. It may take long, but until then, pray keep the money; that will not entangle you in any degree."

What a strange woman! he thought. She does evil with the easy, graceful air of an almsgiver distributing charity, and she does good with the stealth of a criminal!

"I am a fair example of my sex," said she, divining what was in his mind, "weak, ignorant, unfortunate: and stupid—and the proof is any harm I have done to others is nothing to that I have wrought to myself."

Antonino, taking the pocketbook—a dainty article in Russian leather—went to the oaken chest which he opened after what seemed some cabalistic manipulation, and the muttering of what seemed an "Open Sesame!"

"Have you no safe yet, is that box strong and secure?" she inquired in a tone of well assumed anxiety, as she hurriedly took three or four steps to bring her again beside him.

"You need not be alarmed. That is a box of which we made the peculiar fastenings. It is too heavy to be carried off, and burglars will not tamper with it in impunity," said the Italian, smiling maliciously, as he put his hand on the lid to raise it.

"I understand; it opens with a secret lock?"

"Yes; one I cannot tell you about."

"I have no use for it," she said hastily, "on the contrary, I wish the money to be where I cannot touch it."

"Nobody will touch it there," returned the young man gravely. "Stop! how will you get it if anything happens to me—if I should die?"

"A young man like you die in a couple of days!" laughed Cesarine.

"It may occur," he replied gloomily. "Death has hovered over this house at any moment of some of our experiments with the most powerful essences of nature. And only this morning, when I was out to the post-office, they were talking of a hideous discovery—a young man's remains, found in a ditch in the Five Hectare Field."

"A—a young man?"

"A foreigner, some said; but his clothes were in tatters, and the water-rats had disfigured him."

"Poor fellow!" said she, and quickly she added as if eager to change the subject: "my name is on the letters of credit. In case of any mishap, I will plainly say so to my husband and he will return me my own property."

That was sensible. He had no farther remonstrances to offer, and taking advantage of her glancing out into the garden, he closed the lid and fastened it so that she could not see how the trick was done. She was not vexed, for she saw that man is always weak and on the point of losing his Paradise. Antonino would betray as the price of love. She allowed him to go in to luncheon alone, wishing to inspect the mysterious casket; but, unluckily, she was interrupted by Hedwig, who rather officiously wanted to dust the room. Not for the first time, Cesarine, remembering the wide occult sway claimed by Colonel Von Sendlingen, suspected that the girl was not so much her ally as she wished. She had begun to watch her under the impression that she was in confederacy with Mademoiselle Daniels. She had perceived no signs of that, but she believed she intercepted an exchange of glances with the false Marseillais. They were of the same nationality and this fact caused Cesarine to be on her guard. Unless Hedwig repeated what had happened between Clemenceau and Antonino, how could the colonel know of their conversation?

Hesitating to question her directly, disliking her from that moment, and feeling her heart shrink at her loneliness when such crushing odds were threatening her, she donned her "company smile" and went to the sitting-room bravely.



CHAPTER XIX.

THE COMPACT.

Luncheon was served and M. Cantagnac, seated comfortably, was trying the delicacies with rare conscientiousness about any escaping his harpoon-like fork. Cesarine did not give him a second look and neither he nor Clemenceau, with whom he was chatting on politics, more than glanced up at her. M. Daniels was more polite, for he warmly accepted a second cup of coffee as soon as she, without any attempt to displace Mademoiselle Daniels at the urn, took her place beside her.

"Pray go on and attend to the liquors," she said kindly. "I am so nervous that I am afraid I shall break something."

She took a seat which placed her on the left of the old Jew. A little familiarity was only in keeping when two theatrical artists met.

"What is the matter with your daughter? she seems sad," she remarked with apparent interest.

"That is natural enough when we are going away from France, it may be forever."

"Going away from here?" inquired Madame Clemenceau.

"Yes; this evening, but we did not like to go without bidding you good-bye. Now that we have seen you in good health, and thanked you for your hospitality, we can proceed on our mission without compunction."

"A mission—where?"

"I have succeeded in interesting capitalists in your husband's inventions. That is settled; and I have taken up again a holy undertaking which should hardly have been laid aside for a mere money matter. But there is nothing more sacred, after all, than friendship, I owe to your husband more than I have thus far repaid," and he bent a tender regard on his daughter, with its overflow upon Clemenceau one of gratitude.

"Are you going far?" asked Cesarine, keeping her eyes in play but little rewarded by her scrutiny of the sham Marseillais who devoured, like an old campaigner, never sure of the next meal, or of Rebecca who superintended the table in her stead with a serious unconcern.

"Around the world," replied Daniels simply, "straight on to the East."

"Goodness! it is folly to take a young lady with you. Is it a scientific errand? No, you said holy. Religious?"

"Scientific of an exalted type."

"Is science somewhat entertaining for young ladies?"

"Some think it so."

"She might not. Leave her with me. We are comrades of art, you know," smiling up cordially at Rebecca, as if they had been friends of childhood and had never parted any more than Venus' coupled loves.

"Where?"

"In our house," Cesarine replied, as though she were fully assured that the smiling man on the opposite side of the board would not obtain the property. "I do not think we shall quit it."

"If she likes," answered Daniels, easily.

"Rebecca!" he gently called, "Madame invites you to stay with her during my journey. M. Clemenceau is my dearest friend, and from the time of his wife consenting, do not constrain yourself into going if you would rather remain."

"I thank you, madame," replied the Jewess, "but I am going with my father, because we have never quitted one another, and I do not wish to leave him alone."

"Dear child!" exclaimed Daniels embracing her before he let her return to the head of the table. "She will not listen to any suggestion of marriage. I know of a bright young gentleman who adores her—an Israelite like us, in a promising position. He will one day be a professor at the Natural History Museum. But she would not hear of him."

"It is not very amusing to live among birds, beasts and reptiles," said Cesarine.

"Ha, ha! but then those are stuffed," exclaimed her opposite neighbor, showing that he was listening.

"Very likely, she cherishes some little fancy in her heart," said Madame Clemenceau, thinking of both her husband and Antonino.

"Possibly," said the Jew, complacently, for he knew that his daughter was very fair.

"I believe I know the object," continued Madame Clemenceau.

"I am rather astonished that she should have told you, and not me."

"Oh, she has not told me anything, I guessed."

Daniels seemed relieved.

"And if you should like to hear the name," she began rapidly, but he stopped her with a dignified smile. "What, you do not want to know what I have found before you, and so much concerns you!"

"If she has not told me, it is because she does not want me to know," he observed placidly.

"But what if she tells him!" persisted Cesarine.

"She would not let her lover know the state of her heart without informing her father; she would commence with me."

The wife smiled cynically at such unlimited trust and felt her hatred of Rebecca augment.

"There are not many fathers like you!"

"Nor many daughters like her," he retorted proudly. "I am of the opinion that there is a mistake in the French mode of educating girls. The truth about everything should be told them, as is done to their brothers. The ignorance in which they are left often arises from their parents themselves not knowing the causes and end of things, or have no time, or have lost the right to speak of everything to their children from their own errors or passions. My wife was the best of women and I believe Rebecca takes after her. When she was of the age of comprehension, I began to explain the world to her simply and clearly. All of heaven's work is noble; no human soul—even a virgin's—has the right to be shocked by any feature of it. Rebecca aided me when I sought to make a livelihood by the profession of music, to which she had strong proclivities."

Clemenceau was listening in courtesy to this argument, and the false Marseillais did not lose a word—or a sip of his Kirschwasser.

"Afterward, when my ideas changed, and I could make my way to fortune by a thoroughfare, less under the public eye, I associated her in my studies. She knows," proceeded Daniels, who had shaken off a spell of taciturnity which the stranger and Madame Clemenceau had inspired, and seemed unable to pause, "she knows that nothing can be destroyed, and that all undergoes transformation, and cannot cease to exists with the exception of evil which diminishes as it goes on its way."

Cantagnac slowly absorbed another glass of the cherry cordial, which he had to pour out himself as Rebecca had retired to a corner where the host turned over the leaves of photographic album as a cover to their dialogue.

"If my daughter loves," continued Daniels, seeing at last that his theme was too abstruse for his single auditor, "as you conjectured, dear madame, it is surely some honorable person worthy of that love; if she has not informed me it is because there is some obstacle, such as the man's not loving her or being bound to another woman. In any case, the obstacle must be insurmountable, or she would not go away with me into strange countries through great fatigue on a chimerical search."

Cantagnac had risen and, very courteously for his assumed character, had come round the table without going near his host and the Jewess, and entered into the other dialogue.

"Did you say you were going far, monsieur?" he inquired.

Daniels nodded and opened his arms significantly to their utmost extent.

"Leaving Europe with a scientific design? Ah! may one hear?"

"Perhaps it would not much interest you?" returned the old man, who seemed to feel a revival of a prejudice against the visitor upon his coming nearer.

"The atmosphere of this house is so learned," replied, the smiling man unabashed by the sudden coolness, "and, besides, more things interest me than people believe, eh, madame?" directly appealing to the hostess, who had to nod.

"You see I have a great deal of spare time since I retired from business and I am eager to increase my store, ha, ha!"

"Well, the idea which has tormented more than one of my race, has seized me," returned M. Daniels, "I wish to fill up gaps in our traditional story and link our present and our future with our past. The question is of the Lost Tribes of Israel. I believe after some research, that I know the truth on the subject, and, more that I may be chosen to reconquer our country. The ideal one is not sufficient for us, and I am going to locate the real one and register the act of claiming it. Every man has his craze or his ideal, and mine may lead me from China to Great Salt Lake, or to the Sahara."

"What a pity," interjected Cantagnac merrily, "that the Wandering Jew did not have your idea. It would have helped him work out his sentence to walk around the globe!"

"He had no money to lend to monarchs sure to vanquish or to peoples astounded by having been overcome. But his five pence have fructified by dint of much patience, privation and economy. The Wandering Jew has realized the legend and ceases to tramp. He has reached the goal. What do you think about my pleasure tour?" he suddenly inquired of Clemenceau, whose eye he caught. "Child of Europe, happy son of Japhet. I am going to see old Shem and Ham. Have you a keepsake to send them or a promise to make?"

"Tell them," said the host, coming over to join the group, while Rebecca, during the continued resignation of Madame Clemenceau, superintended the servant's removal of the luncheon service, "tell them that we are all hard at work here and that more than ever there's a chance of our becoming one family."

On seeing Clemenceau approach his wife, the pretended Marseillais delicately withdrew to the corner of the sideboard where the cigar-stand tempted him. But he kept his eyes secretly on the two men who gave him more concern than the two women. He reflected that fate had managed things wisely for his plans, for if Clemenceau had married the incorruptible Jewess, he might have been more surely foiled. As for Daniels, the amateur apostle who hinted at a union of his people, he might be dangerous or useful. He determined to put a spy on his track, who might smear his face with ochre and stick an eagle's feather in his cap so that, if seen to shoot him in a New Mexican canon, that supposed lost Tribe of Israel which include the Apaches would gain the credit of the murder. While reflecting, his quick ear heard a light loot draw near; he did not look round, sure that it was his new recruit who crept up to him. It was, indeed, Madame Clemenceau, who put his half-emptied liquor glass upon the sideboard by him.

"No heeltapi in our house, Monsieur!" she exclaimed.

Cantagnac tossed off the concentrated cordial with contempt; his head was not one to be affected by such potations.

"Thank you! have you already opened the trenches?" he asked in an undertone.

"By means of the Italian, yes. I have entered the stronghold."

"But he closed the door in your face!"

"No, no; I can open it at any time."

"Excellent Kisschwasser, this of yours, madame!" exclaimed Von Sendlingen, in his satisfaction speaking the word with a little too accurate a pronunciation to suit a native of the south of France.

"Mark that man!" whispered Rebecca to Clemenceau, whom she had rejoined as he stood by her father. "Distrust him! his laugh is forced and false! I am sure that he wishes you evil!"

"Then stay here and shield the house!"

"No; I must go this evening. Ah, you men of brains laugh at us women for entertaining presentiments. But we do have them and we must utter them. Be on your guard!"

"And must you go?" went on Clemenceau to Daniels, as if he expected to find him less resolute than his daughter.

"More than ever!" but, seeing how he had saddened him, he took his hand with much emotion and added: "Rebecca will explain. I go away happy to think that the honest men outnumber the other sort and that when we all take hold of hands, we shall see that the scoundrels excluded from our ring will be scarcely worth disabling from farther injury."

Cesarine, perceiving that her confederate was edging gradually toward the rifle which Antonino had been shooting with and which had been removed from the drawing-room, where the guest for a day had too many opportunities to be alone with it. To cover his inspection, she suggested that Rebecca should afford the company a final pleasure, a kind of swan's song, and went and opened the cottage-piano for her. The Jewess did not refuse the invitation and began Gounod's "Medje" in a voice which Von Sendlingen had room to admit had improved in tone and volumn, and would make her as worthy of the grand opera house as it had, five years before, of the Harmonista and its class. Daniels quietly left the room, loth to disturb Clemenceau, whom that voice enthralled and who became more and more deeply submerged in the thoughts it engendered. He suffered pain from the need to liberate his sorrows, confide his spirit and communicate his dreams. And was not this singer the very one created to comfort him and lull him to rest? Must he remain heroic and ridiculous in the indissoluble bond, and endure silently. On Antonino he rested his mind and on Rebecca, the daughter of the eternally persecuted, he longed to rest his soul.

The greatness of this man and the purity of this gifted creature were so clearly made for one another that everybody divined and understood the unspoken, immaterial love.

What an oversight to have let Cesarine abduct him when it was Rebecca to whom chance had shown that he ought to belong! If he had remained free till this second meeting, she would have been his wife, his companion his seventh day repose, and the mother of his earthly offspring instead of the immortal twins, genius and glory, which poorly consoled the childless husband! As it was, the powers constituted would not allow them to dwell near each other. She could only be the bride in the second life—for eternity. She loved him as few women had ever loved, because he was good, great and just—and because he was unhappy. No man existed in her eyes superior to him. Nothing but death would set him free from the woman who had not appreciated him properly. She had let pass the greatest bliss a woman can know on earth—the love of a true heart and the protection of a great intellect. If death struck them before the wife, Felix would behold Rebecca on the threshold of the unknown land where they would be united tor infinity. Her creed did not warrant such a hope—his said that in heaven there were no marriages, but her heart did not heed such sayings, and her feelings told her that thus things would come to pass.

She had concluded the piece of music. She rose and, for the first time, gave Cesarine her hand.

"Farewell!" she said.

"Why say it now?" answered Madame Clemenceau, surprised. "You are not going till to-morrow morning."

"To-night! I may not see you again, we have so many preparations to make."

"Well, as you did not come here to see me, it is of no consequence. Farewell!"

"I am your servant, madame," said the Jewess, bowing.

"Ah, Hagar!" hissed she, "unmasked."

"Farewell, Sarah!" retorted Rebecca, stung out of her equanimity by this sudden dart of the viper, but Cesarine said no more, and she proceeded steadily toward the door.

Clemenceau had preceded her thither.

"What did she say?" he inquired.

"Nothing worth repeating. Beware of her as well as of that man!" but she saw that he would not follow her glance and draw a serious inference from the way in which the wife and the unwelcome guest had drawn closely together. "Fulfil your destiny," she continued solemnly. "Work! remain firm, pure and great! Be useful to mankind. Above transient things, in the unalterable, I will await you. Do not keep me lonely too long," was wrung from her in a doleful sob.

He could not speak, it was useless, for she knew already everything that he night say.

"At last!" ejaculated Von Sendlingen in relief, when all had gone out, as he sprang on the rifle and feverishly fingered it. "This is the rifle of their latest finish. What an odd arrangement! Where the deuce is the hammer—the trigger—and all that goes toward making up the good old rifle of our fathers? Oh, Science, Science! what liberties are taken in your name!" he cried in drollery too bitter not to be intended to cover his vexation. "Mind, this rifle is included in our contract?"

"Everything," she answered in a fever, looking toward the doorway, where her husband had disappeared with the Jewess. "Be easy! The rifle, the cannon, the happiness, the honor and the lives of all here—myself as well! If there is anything more you long for, say so!"

"Talk sensibly!" said he severely and gripping her wrist.

Restored by the pressure, she drew a long breath and said in a low voice:

"One way or another, things will come to a head to-night. This Jewish intriguante and the old fox her father are going away by the railway at nine o'clock, and Felix will escort them. Antonino will be alone here, and I mean to make him my assistant as he has been my husband's."

"Better trust nobody! it is risky, and, besides, with an accomplice, the reward becomes less by his share."

"How much is all? Will you pay five million marks?"

"That's too much. Put it two millions—half when you hand over the cipher, half when we hold the working drawings and Antonino's ammunition."

"Be it so," she answered after a brief pause, during which both listened. "If Antonino will help me, so much the better for him. It would be delightful to see Italy with a native! Now go away. We must not be seen conversing together."

"If the young man turns restive?" suggested the prudent spy.

"Impossible! he is charmed. However, remember this: Return to-night after the party has gone to the station, secrete yourself in the grounds where you can watch the drawing-room windows. If one opens and I call, run up to aid me. If none open to you, hasten away. The danger with which I contend will be one which you could not overcome!"



CHAPTER XX.

ON THE EVE.

The evening was calm and clear over Montmorency, where there was even grandeur in the stillness. Nature—the discreet confident and inexhaustible counsellor, always ready to intermediate between God and man—nature was appeasing passion and misery in all bosoms but Felix Clemenceau's, as he strolled in the garden which he did not expect long to possess. Rebecca was going away and Cesarine had come, two sufficient reasons for him to detest the place. He had called upon the scene to give him advice on his course, and he hoped to understand clearly what it had commanded to him in the hour of grief tempered with faith. He had not the resources of others; he could not consult the shades of his parents; his mother's tomb was not one to be pointed out with pride, any more than his father's.

It seemed to him that he was ordered to continue struggling till he vanquished; this he had always tried. Work and seek out! And yet his mind wavered and his resolve was unsettled. It was the ever dulcet voice of that Circe which sufficed to agitate and obscure his soul in spite of his having believed it was forever detached from her. But these umbrageous and odoriferous hills, knew how deeply he loved her, for he had spoken of his thraldom to them when he might not speak to her under pain of shame and debasement.

Had he not undergone enough and pardoned as far as could be expected? But she had disdained condonation, mocked at it and trampled it under foot.

Again she came to entangle him in her love. No; her wiles and witchery, for she was not a woman to love anyone or anything. Unable to love her own flesh and blood, she was an alien to humanity, as well as to love. To such a mother, he owed solely indifference.

Such a woman was only a human form, less to him than the least of the patient, laborious animals useful to man.

As the stars grew darkened by clouds above the impassible horizon, his reflections turned more gloomy and deadly. Was it impious for him to arrogate the right to substitute his justice for that supreme, and wield its dreadful sword? But he shrank from acting as his father had done, and mainly because he saw that, if ever the world knew that he loved Rebecca, it would say that he had slain his wife to clear the path to the altar for his second marriage.

Cesarine had hinted of repentance, her return portended the same. The world would side with her. Yes; he would give her another chance. After the guests departed, he would let Antonino also go, he would resign himself to being coupled again with this chain-companion in the galleys of life!

"If it is true," he concluded, "I will endeavor to lead her to the light and truth, although her soul is full of shadows and the divine spark is clogged with ashes. Oh, heaven, may she be filled with the temptation to do good and mayest thou receive her in thy endless mercifulness!"

The squeaking of the gravel under a regular and heavy step induced him to look round, and a burly shape loomed up in the darkness between the plane trees. It was the so-called Cantagnac, who bowed, with his hat off.

"I have been hunting for you everywhere," he said jovially. "I want to say good-bye without company by, for it makes me timid, ha, ha! though you would not think it. Nice wholesome air, here! cool, decidedly cool, but wholesome. Doing a solitary smoke over a new invention?"

"No, monsieur, I was conversing."

"Eh! but I do not see anybody!"

"I was conversing with Nature."

"Oh, what the poet-fellows call musing, eh?"

"A kind of prayer."

"I see! well, his church is always open and you can go to service anytime, and day or night! and no collection-plate, ha, ha!"

"I make it a practice every day, if only briefly."

"Quite right! quite! I am inclined that way myself, since I lost my wife and our boy. He said something about hoping to meet me one day up there!" and he flourished his handkerchief about his eyes and toward the clouds. "Blessed relief to pray and do you really get an answer now and then? in time, no doubt, for it's a great way off!"

"Do you not believe in heaven, M. Cantagnac?" demanded Clemenceau, bluntly.

In the twilight and loneliness, the question struck home, and the spy felt compelled to make some answer.

"My dear M. Clemenceau," he faltered, "I never meddle with matters which do not teach me anything. One word has existed thousands of years, and yet full explanations on the highest secrets have been wholly refused, so that the finest intellects give up seeking them unless they want to go mad. So I think it my duty to abstain and not lose my time in studies useless and dangerous. It is not merely a matter of reasoning, but of prudence. Of course, every man is his own master. I grant that we certainly are subjected to a power above our wit and will. We are born without knowing how, and die without knowing why. Between birth and death, swarm struggles, passions, sorrows, maladies, miseries of all kinds; an unfair, uneven sharing of worldly goods, and scoundrels often happy and triumphant and honest people most often unhappy and erroneously judged. We are told that we should adore and praise this state of things; but I only hold such events as certainties that I can see and turn to my profitable use. Now you, M. Clemenceau, are a honorable man—a great man since you can carry on a conversation with Nature! Why not ask her a favor on account of your belief and your work? so that you will not have to doubt her some day more than I do. But let us talk of more substantial things. I have inspected the plan of the property and walked over the grounds. I have your agent's address, and in a week, I will write to him and make my offer. I dare say we shall come to an agreement. Let me thank you for your very kind welcome—I shall be off in ten minutes."

Absorbed in meditation, Clemenceau did not hold out his hand, and, with the idea upon him of the engagement with Madame Clemenceau, the spy did not remind him of the omission.

"You need not walk over to the station, for M. Daniels and his daughter are going in my carriage. I will find you a place."

This arrangement might have necessitated the false Marseillais going into the cars and getting out at the next station; so he excused himself on the plea that the walk would please him better.

"To tell you the truth, I am bound to take exercise or die of apoplexy—so my family doctor tells me. By the way, I have taken leave already of Madame Clemenceau. A Russian, you tell me? I never should have imagined it! Ah, one can see that you have converted her into a true French lady—lucky man! I can understand that you believe in lofty ideas beside a beautiful and talented woman like her! Lucky, lucky man!"

And he turned aside, calling out as he departed:

"I know my way! give my respects to your friends who are hunting for the Lost Tribes! ha, ha!"

This laugh, loud but not jolly as it was intended to appear, routed Clemenceau's solemn thoughts. It seemed, like Pan's, from a statue, which gleamed in a vista, still to reverberate when the inventor went back to the house. At the upper windows gleamed lights which moved to and fro, and shadows flitted across the openings; it was the usual bustle when guests are packing up, and the idea of the too quiet and lonely house, of the morrow saddens the observer.

A woman's form darted across the lawn and made the master start. It came along easily, and he saw that it was one familiar with the grounds.

"Hedwig!"

It was the servant who had run out to the stables to see that the horses were put to the carriage.

"Stop a minute! we are in privacy here, and I want to have a word with you."

The girl paused, intimidated and almost frightened; she lost color as she stood, agitatedly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, and averting her eyes from the speaker. A thief caught in a felonious act would not have presented a more damning spectacle.

"Not only are we breaking up the household, Hedwig, but the house is going to other hands. The mistress and I will live in a hotel at Paris for some time, on account of my changed business relations. Consequently, we must dispense with your services. Madame will, on grand occasions, have a professional hair dresser in, and so—in a word, I must ask you to please yourself about returning to your own country, or seeking another situation in this one. You can refer to Madame for a character; for, I believe, you have always served her faithfully. But you need not look to her for a present, too. Here is a couple of hundred franc notes by way of notice. I wish you well wherever you go."

To the amazement of the speaker, instead of accepting the token of kindness, Hedwig suddenly put both hands behind her back, and stood confounded. Tears silently flowed down her cheeks; then, falling on her knees, she sobbed:

"Oh, master, I do not deserve this! Oh, master please forgive me! I am a very wicked girl!"

"What are you about?" he exclaimed, fearing that the unexpected boon had crazed her. "Do get up!"

"No, no; not before master forgives me!" moaned she.

"Oh, yes, yes—anything!" aiding her to rise.

But she continued weeping, and with the fluency in the illiterate when they have long brooded over a speech to relieve their mind, she said:

"You don't know what goes on, master! but I am forced to tell you now, since you are so good. I have always been in madame's service since we came out of Germany. I was devoted to her, and I knew her when I was at the Persepolitan Hotel, but devotion when women are concerned, becomes complicity.

"Madame never has cared for you, monsieur, for you and yours. She did not marry you for any liking, but because of spite. Not spite from your father having punished one of her precious family—they are all a bad lot—a witch's brood! faugh! but to Mademoiselle Daniels whom she feared would secure the prize. Madame carried on dreadful! When she went away last time, it is true she had a telegram from her uncle—but that was a happy accident. She was going to bolt anyway, and that came in so nicely! She was planning to elope with one of her conquests—the Viscount—"

"I know!"

"You know? Well, you don't know that the dead man found in the ditch was the Viscount—"

"I saw him killed!" in the same measured tone.

"Oh!" She paused, but recovering, she continued, in a lower voice and looking furtively around: "You cannot know that she came back with no good end. I believe it was to meet the gentleman who came in at the same time, a-pretending to buy the house—"

"M. Cantagnac!" muttered the inventor, a tolerable flock of suspicions which that ingenious individual had unintentionally excited, rushing upon his brain.

"He's no Marseillais—he's a German, and he is a secret agent. He is—he is—well, I may make a clean breast of it—he is one you ought to have remembered, the major whom you cudgelled in Munich—"

"Von Sendlingen!"

"Yes, and a colonel—I do not know but he is a general now; he has the manner and means of one!" said Hedwig, shuddering. "He knows all of madame's peccadilloes—ay, all her crimes—"

"Crimes! be careful, girl!"

"Yes, crime, for she killed her little boy! Thank heaven, I had no hand in that—she would not trust me there, and that shows I am not so very bad a woman, don't it? She poisoned the little innocent as surely as we stand here under the eye of God!"

"Go on; go on," said Clemenceau, hoarsely.

"The colonel threatened to tell you these and other things unless she consented to sell him all your business secrets—and give him the model gun that goes off without any powder and caps."

"Ah! she consented?" growled the inventor, grinding his teeth and his eyes kindling.

"Nobody can hold out against the colonel. He soon made me play the spy on everybody for his benefit. But this is not all!"

"Not all! what a sink of iniquity! Would she poison Mademoiselle Rebecca, too?"

"I do not doubt it! The old witch her grandmother must have taught her all the tricks of her trade. But I meant to say that she is setting her cap at poor, dear, young M. Antonino—"

"I know that. Take your money! and live honestly."

"No, monsieur," she replied with some dignity. "And here is money that the colonel gave me. It burns me! I beg you to give it toward some good work, which you understand better than me. Will you not—and forgive me?"

"Have you anything more to say?"

"I have been peeping and listening, but they are all very cunning. I only gleaned that the colonel who has just gone out as if to the station, should return later and hang around to have the rifle and some papers delivered to him."

"By Antonino?"

"If your wife can make him a cat's-paw; if not, she is capable of doing all herself—though, anyway, she is driven to it. But, monsieur, it burdened me and if you had not called me, I was coming to tell you of their schemes. I do not like your idea of killing people by hundreds, but it may be good to honest folks, beset by savages and such like, and it is not right of a servant to let a master be robbed by more than bandits and brigands."

"I am grateful to you, girl." She seized his hand and covered it with grateful kisses. "Keep your money and this I give you. Do good with your own hand, then it will bless both giver and receiver, as is written."

"Monsieur, you are too good. Could I ask a favor—a proof that you do not think me altogether bad? Will you recommend me to Mademoiselle Daniels. The Jews do not object to Christian servants, and, besides," she said with simplicity, "I am so poor a Christian."

"You shall enter her service. You will continue, reformed under her charge. Go and pack up and hasten from this house—accursed as an eyrie of vultures!"

"I am glad you have the warning. Excuse me, but if you were to do like the colonel only pretend to go away and come back here to use your ears and eyes, you would see what happens."

By the look that passed over her master's face, the girl, though no wise woman, perceived that she had mistaken. He was not the sort to act like a Von Sendlingen and hide himself to peep and listen. He would be no better than herself if he acted thus.

"I have advised you to go away with the Daniels. I shall drive the party over in the carriage to the station and return as though I knew of nothing. There are times for men to act; times for God to have a clear field. Persevere in the right path, girl, and say no more to anybody not even Mademoiselle Daniels."

"But you will be seeing madame first?" inquired the girl, fearing the collision to which she had contributed, but lighter of soul since she had flashed the danger-signal.

"M. Antonino first, and then your mistress," replied he in a stern tone which put an end to the dialogue.



CHAPTER XXI.

THE LAST APPEAL.

In the large room where Cesarine was to achieve her crowning act of treachery, she and her husband were closeted. On the latter's unruffled brow not even her feline gaze could read what a perfect acquaintance he possessed with all her past and her purposed moves.

"Your maid tells me that you wished to speak to me," he said.

"It is necessary, on the eve of a change in our mode of life, so extreme as a home broken up in favor of a stay at a hotel."

"I am listening to you," he said curtly.

"If I were to say to you that I love you, what would be your answer?" she said, changing the subject and her tone entirely.

"Nothing! I might wonder what new evil you intended to commit to my prejudice. Pure curiosity for you can do nothing more with me."

She was convinced of that, and she thrilled with all the irritation of a woman who has lost her power of fascination over even one man.

"Admitting that I cannot do you any harm," she said, "others may and, perhaps a great deal. Would you believe that I love you at least if my pledge of love consisted in my aiding you to repel the harm and to triumph over your enemies at the risk of the greatest danger to myself?"

He shook his head resolutely.

"What other proof do you want?"

He intimated that he could do without any aid from her.

"I am sincere, I swear it!" she exclaimed.

"On what can you swear?"

"It would appear that you, whom people rate as a saint, and so just, do not believe in repentance?"

"I do!"

"Then, I repent," said she, rolling her eyes like Magdalen in a Guido picture.

"No; those repenting do not say so before they prove it—they give the evidence and do not boast."

"But what if I have no time to wait?" she said piteously. "What if it is necessary for my soul's sake and perhaps for yours, that I should tell you at once what I intended to exhibit gradually when I arrived? make the effort to believe me without delay, for one single minute may redeem my blackened life and save all to come. Is it so hard for you to listen to me, and to believe me?" she wailed. "It would only be renewing an old habit of yours, for you used to love me, and ardently, too! The first kiss you ever gave to a woman, and the only ones you ever received from a woman, are mine! you see I do not doubt you, though appearances were against you when I returned to this house. All your chastity—enthusiasm—energy, love and faith—all were poured into this bosom. Can these things be forgotten? No, no, never! I am sure that when a man like you loves a woman like me, her memory never leaves him."

"You mistake!" he said dryly.

"And you, if you think that those fops at the marchioness' were not tricked and fooled by me! even the cheat who induced me to leave my home—you see, I am frank—he was my dupe, and I saw all the time his inferiority to the husband whom I quitted. In that case, it was a fortune that tempted me, for you know how pressed we were! But when alone, sobered—horrified by the warning conveyed in the sudden death of that man, I valued you correctly, and saw that I loved you above all men. I was subjected to the power of goodness and loving which is enthroned in you. All of a sudden, as you fell in love, I adored you, and if only you could have been kept in ignorance of what I did, there would have been no wife more faithful, devoted, submissive and loving than your own Cesarine."

"Did I not forgive you when I learned of your faults?" he reproached her.

"True, you pardoned me," she answered, "but loftily, as one at a distance, shaking me off and regaining possession of yourself. In short, ceasing to be a man. You led me to see that you would no longer believe me, because I had once told a lie. Your behavior was grand, noble and lofty, for any other man would have whipped me out of his house like a cur; and yet I ought not to have been treated so."

"How? like a daughter of the Vieradlers—though you are probably not one?"

"You should have abused me, trampled me under foot, even—but then forgiven me like an erring man. I am earthly—worldly—and I do not understand grand sentiments and half-forgiveness."

There was some sense in her argument, but arguments would not have any effect on a character like his, which losing esteem once, was not to be deceived again. He had not required Hedwig's revelation about the web of treachery spun around him to be invulnerable to the pleading one. Her murder of her infant had ruined her irredeemably. Over it he had shed tears, though it was more in her image than his and, she had offered no one!

"Are we women more angelic than you men," she exclaimed the more feverishly, as she felt she was not gaining ground and that over the crumbling edge of which she vaguely hoped to climb, he would not stretch a hand in help. "Are faults, errors and failures your privilege, as force is? Did I really care for any of those men? Do I even recall one of them? It was only in rage and spite against your coldness that I went over to the marchioness. I ran to these flirtations to forget, as I would have taken morphine to sleep. But I have not forgotten you, and I have not slept off my love for you, and this is the truth!"

He made an impatient gesture.

"In short, nobody could wile away my heart. All those men together would not equal such a one as you, whom I loved and longed for. I do not wish to live—I was really ill in Paris, though you will not believe a word of it, and will not trouble to learn that I speak the truth—so ill that I sat at death's door and the peeping in terrified me. In that black cavern there was no love-light, and I crave for love! Then I discovered that I could not live without you, and that I was right to forgive you so much, though you will not forgive me heartily a little. See how abject I am! You are the master, but do not abuse your power. If I have no soul—inspire me with one—animate the statue of white clay—or share with me your own. We are bound to each other by sacred ties, and the marriage law must have been made by those who forsaw that the noblest and most generous of men might be wedded to the most guilty of women, but that he would save her. Rescue me!" she cried, sinking upon her knees.

"I am ready; what do you want?" he said in moved voice so that at last she began to hope.

"Forget my faults and the wrong they have caused you. I want you to forgive me everything up to the present minute—proudly hurl the past into dead eternity and make all that ought not to have been like what never was. Lastly, I crave for our departure for a change of sun and air and sky, so that the woman I mean to become henceforward should never be reminded for a single instant of the wretch that I was. Oh, let us live no more but for each other—you entirely mine as I entirely your own!"

Almost carried away by the eloquent outburst, Clemenceau had but one thought to cling to and hold him in the flood. His work of patriotism!

"Your work? well, there should be no work where love presides! after all," she continued, rising and venturing to slide her arms upon his shoulders, "you only toiled because you believed I did not love you. You tried to become celebrated only because you were not happy. You were a student when I opened the book of love to you and the little I showed you to read gave you the yearning for more. Labor came after love. When I caused you pain, you looked for consolation and you owe your genius to me. Genius understands or divines everything, and knows what human weakness is. Ah, if you had been weak and I mighty, how gladly I would have pardoned you! Had you done any wrong—if you were wrung by remorse like most of us—what joy to make you forget it. But no, you are honor itself, and I lose all hope?"

"Poor creature!" sighed he, but still like marble though her arms enfolded him and palpitate warm unlike serpents whose coils their curves resembled.

"You pity me?" she murmured coaxingly, although he did not thaw under her tightening clasp; "then, you agree?"

He shook his head. As usual, when perversity defends, the pleading reached the judge too late. Her pressure became irksome, he thought of the devilfish tightening its rings till fatal, and, by an effort, irresistible while gentle, he disengaged himself from her arms. They dropped inert by her panting sides as if broken. But only for an instant her defeat overpowered her.

"I see," she exclaimed, with a great change in her tone, "there is no more room in the heart which I deserted! You have replaced me with that Rebecca!"

"It is true I love her," her rejoined, "but not as you suppose. Do not try to understand how, for you cannot understand. Heaven knows that I would have wished to associate you with me in the same love and the same glory, but it is impossible. Once we were ships in company, sailing side by side—I thought with the same sailing orders—but you stole away in the night and I have had to direct my course alone toward a sea eternally forbidden to you. Oh, if you only knew how far I am already from you! The being who speaks to me by your lips is not known to me—I see her not! I do not know who you are. The only bond between us is the chain the law imposes—let us carry it between us but each with the share apart."

"What is to become of me?" cried Cesarine, forced to try her last weapon. "You picked up a starving boy on the road and was kind to him. I am an outcast at your feet, hungry for love—succor me, no less kindly! I am a living creature, and I may be taught many things. Utilize me by your intelligence. Can I not be your pupil, your helper, your assistant? Do for me what Daniels has done for his daughter—initiate me into science, explain your labels to me and, associate me in your work."

"Teach you what you would sell!" he burst forth at the end of his endurance.

"Can you believe that?" she faltered, receding a step, turning white and trembling in the fear that he knew all.

"Believe? I am certain that you are lying now as always!" he thundered. "It is impossible that your remorse should be sincere; it must mask some infamy. You have perpetrated faults which are unattended by remorse. Enough! If I am wrong, and you really do repent, it will not take a minute, but years for you to be believed, and it does not concern me. Apply to the Church, which alone can redeem and absolve such culprits as you."

Convinced that she had lost the battle and forgetting her cunning, Madame Clemenceau threw off the veil and showed herself the direct offspring of the infernal regions. Her voice sounded like the hiss of fiery serpents, and her frame quivered as if she stood in a current of consuming vapor. Her eyes, too, wore that painful expression of depth of agony as though her disappointment were excruciating. With his pardon, love, protection and fortune, she might have defied Von Sendlingen and his league, but, alone, she was a stormy petrel flapping its insignificant pinions in the face of the God of Storms. Felix refused to be cheated by her and she was lost. But the criminal hates to stand alone in the dock; she wished to be terribly avenged because he was so great and so implacable. She would show that she could be extreme, too; if she were not encouraged to love, she would hate.

"Oh, you pitiless one, because you have right on your side and your conscience," she screamed; "I will drag you down with me into curses and blasphemies, and others as well! whoever you hold dear shall perish with us!"

"My father was threatened in the same way," retorted Clemenceau. "He had not the patience I enjoy. Had he but waited a little, the viper would have died in her own venomous slime!"

"Then you will not kill me as your murderer did my aunt?"

"No! you have wrecked my happiness, my home, my private life, but I forgive you, and that is your punishment. You have cast your wicked, unholy lures about my adopted son, Antonino, but I overlook this because he will repulse you and, that will be an augmentation of your punishment. You threaten Rebecca Daniels, but such are protected by the great Giver of good and, that is again an augmentation of your punishment. No, I will not hurt you—I would not kill one to whom long life—as it was to your witch grandmother, embitters every fraction of time. Live! and, remember, if you are here when I return, that our paths diverge forever here and beyond the earth!"

She had sunk in a heap on the tiger-skin rug and her hair, loosened by accident or perhaps by design, streamed in a sheet of graven gold over her faultless shoulders. Through this shimmering net, her tears flowed, detached like strung diamonds scattered from the thread. But her weeping and her attitude were thrown away, for she heard his step as regular as a soldier's, leaving the room, crossing the vestibule and taking him out to where the carriage wheels ground the gravel. Von Sendlingen had gone; the Daniels were descending the stairs; even the servants gave no sign of life. Already the doomed house began to sound with those dull echoes when spectres promenade where human tenants have dwelt. Under ordinary conditions, her place was to speed the parting guests, but her farewell to Rebecca had expressed her sentiments, and she dared not risk another contest of wits with the Hebrew.

She heard the horse's hoofs and the wheels beat the sand, and the click of the gate closing after the vehicle. The silence of death fell on the deserted house.

"I am alone," she said, sitting up but not rising.

"Now it will be everyone for himself and myself upon the side of evil, where they forced me to rank."

Hardly had she risen to her feet, very tremulous, and prepared to go to the mirror over the sideboard to re-arrange her hair, than she heard footsteps in the hall.

"Hedwig!" but listening more coolly, "no, a man!" she added, "has Von Sendlingen the audacity to enter?"

A man opened the door, but stood petrified on the threshold.



CHAPTER XXII

FELIX

It was Antonino.

"Is this the keeper?" thought Cesarine, laughing scornfully within herself. "A pretty boy for the austere Clemenceau to trust! Do not excuse yourself," she called out. "Close the door—it causes a draft! So, you told my husband that you loved me?"

Far from expecting this address, the Italian let several seconds pass before he faltered:

"Who told you so?"

"He did! he never lacks frankness, I will say that for him. Well, you have destroyed my chances of securing a peaceful life. And yet I never did you any harm, did I?"

"I destroy you?" repeated he, as she began to weep after a vain attempt to hide her eyes in her tresses.

"How is that?"

"Because I lost control of myself under his anger and his threats, and I confessed to him also that I was fond of you. We have a fellow feeling and selected the same confidant!"

"You love me?"

"For what else did I come back to this gloomy house? What else would have induced me to stay? He drove me away before, and I never suspected that it was to clear the scene for Rebecca, fool—child that I was! And now he picked the quarrel with me about you in order to go off with the heathen! You men are so monopolizing! He wants to be let love the inky-eyed Jewess, but I must not say a kind word to you! Oh, what am I to do now?" and in pretending to repair the disarray of her hair, down came a luxuriant tress. "What does it matter which way I turn? All roads lead to the river or the railroad—a step into the cold water or repose on the track of the iron horse, and no one will then torment poor Cesarine!"

"You have some sinister plan," said Antonino, frightened by her manner. "I will not let you go away alone."

"Is it thus you guard your master's house?"

"Then wait till he returns and decide upon something."

"He will decide on separating us, that is sure. Do you think if he takes me, that you could go with us?"

"No! but if you meant to kill yourself, I should die after you."

"Why not die together?"

"I do not care."

"Then you love me thoroughly?" she exclaimed in delight.

"Death would be repose, and this struggle is driving me frantic," said he, in a deep voice.

"Well, we will die some day," she said with pretended fervor, "but we are young and have time before us. Lovers do not willingly die! If you love me as I love you, you would, like me, find life all of a sudden wondrously bright! What a blessing that I have money for our enjoyment!" clapping her hands like a child.

"In your fair Italy, we—"

"Money," repeated he, raised by her magic into a region above such sordid ideas and falling quickly.

"Of course! my bank orders! stay, they are in your box. Let us hasten away before he returns. Quick, take!"

"No;" said Antonino. "When he left the house in my charge he bade me touch nothing, and let nothing be touched until his return."

"He forsaw!" muttered the faithless wife, gnawing one of the tresses furiously as she studied the Italian's emotion. "Get me my money!"

"Wait until—"

"And with it those papers that describe your discoveries."

"What do you mean?" he cried, coming to a halt, half-way toward the chest while she was undoing one of the windows of which she had drawn back the curtains. "The papers—they are not mine, or yours."

"They will make the man I love rich and famous!" she replied, with eyes that seemed to light up the room far more than the starlight entering. "You know all about the work. With those plans in the language you also read, you can rise higher than he! He restricts his genius to his country—you—we will sell to the highest bidder!"

"Mercenary fiend! I comprehend all now!" said the Italian.

"So much the better!" she replied, coolly, having opened the window and descried a shadow standing guard in a narrow alley. "We shall lose no time in explaining."

"You mean to betray your country?"

"Neither mine nor yours! our country is wherever love and gold are rulers."

"Wretch!" cried he, taking a step toward her so threateningly that she retreated from the window to which his back was turned as he continued to face her.

"Which is the meaner?" she responded. "I deceive a man who loaths me, scorns me and threatens me with the love of another! You deceive the man who shelters you and to whom you owe everything. I betray him who does me harm—you, him who did you good. We are on a level, unless you have surpassed me. This is love! Did you imagine that you can withdraw the foot that takes one step in this path? An error, for one must tread it to the end. The steps are passion, the fault, the vice and the crime. But I have need of you to save me. I am yours and your soul is mine! Take the spoil and follow me!"

In his surprise, Antonino did not remark a footstep, sounding harsh with gravel grinding the wood of the verandah, or a grim face at the open window.

"You are right," he said. "I am a scoundrel, but I am not going to be a villain. It is I who should commit suicide. Farewell! my death be on your head!"

"You have spoken your doom!" said she quickly, as she made a sign to Von Sendlingen in whose hand she saw naked steel abruptly gleam.

"Who's there?" began the Italian, but, before he could turn, the long stiletto, drawn out of a sword-cane, was passed through his slender body.

He fell without a groan and his staring eyes, sublimely unconscious of his assassin and of the instigator of the crime, were riveted, on the ceiling.

"Confound it!" said the colonel, "this is not your husband!"

"No, another conscientious fool!" she said brutally. "Waste no time on that boy. Before the man returns, let us seize our prise. Keep your hands off. This is no common chest. It opens with a combination lock and the word is 'R-e-b-e-c-c-a!'"

She quickly fingered the studs which opened the lock when properly played upon, and to the joy of Colonel Von Sendlingen, she could lift up the loosened lid. But for a temporary vexation, they saw in the dim light that a kind of steel grating still closed the discovered space.

"That will not detain me long," said the colonel, contemptuously, and relying upon his great strength as he forced his fingers between these bars, he secured a firm hold and began to draw the frame up toward him. "You have done your part, madame, well, and I—"

At the same instant, the chest became a mass of the whitest flame which expanded monstrously and the whole house shook in a dreadful explosion.

It was supernaturally that Clemenceau had been warned to stand aside and let the justice of heaven deal its stroke. No longer fear that Cesarine will work evil alone or directed by Von Sendlingen. At the last moment, all was put in order again by the execution by the soulless mechanism of the burglar defying-safe. The law of heaven shone forth in triumph and what was repentant in the errant soul was recalled to where goodness is omnipotent.

The flame leaped over the three dead bodies and seized upon the furniture, spreading in all sides. The timbers of the villa were old and kiln-dried. The proprietor, returning from the station, had a dreadful beacon to guide him.

All Montmorency turned out of doors to assist in extinguishing the conflagration. Not often does the quiet suburb treat itself to such spectacles, and when, to that sensation, was added that of three dead bodies dragged from the shattered drawing-room where every thing else was consumed, it may be believed that the night was memorable.

The Daniels were telegraphed to at Paris, and they returned before midnight. They alone knew that the grief of Clemenceau was given to Antonino and not to his wife, but the lookers-on were deceived, and many a man, returning to his slippers and the evening journal, scolded his wife for having repeated baseless scandals about the proprietor of the Reine-Claude Villa living on cool terms with his unfortunate wife.

The coroner of Montmorency did not display any broad perception of the tragedy, although the superfluity of eight inches of Sendlingen's steel in the side of a young man pronounced dead by asphyxia would have struck one of the laity. But the reporters of the Paris press were more perspicacious. They related that an envoy of a foreign union of unscrupulous capitalists had attempted to rob M. Clemenceau's residence of his inventions and France of a glory, but had been met by his dauntless wife and an assistant who had punished the brigand, although losing their own lives in defence of the patriotic trust. It was formed convenient to suppress all mention of the fact of the lady being Russian and the man Italian.

But in his death, Von Sendlingen gained some revenge. The loss of Antonino the detailed plans delayed Clemenceau in his project. The War farther threw them back and it was only recently that his perfected cannon was formally accepted. In all his tribulations and disappointments, Daniels supported him, for he, too, was an idealist, and so truly his friend as to defer his own scheme until he should be at ease.

After the fortuitous meeting of those men had come irresistible attraction and communion, moral, intellectual and scientific—friendship to the full meaning of the word.

Poetic justice, as we call the fate least like what man deals out, decreed that the chateau of the Marchioness de Latour-lagneau should be dilapidated during the Prussian occupation of Montmorency. On its ruins rises the manufactury of he new rifle. On the side of the heart, too, the same justice rewarded Clemenceau, for he married Rebecca, and they were happy in having sons to bear his name worthily. Cesarine was forgotten, since, however great a conflagration may be—however far the flare may be cast on the sky—whatever the extent of damage—it must die out in time. Such is Passion, and the brighter its blaze the blacker the ruins it leaves after it—the deeper the misery—the wider the loneliness. It devours itself, with no revival like the Phoenix; but Love occupies the whole of life, however extended, and still has the strength and volumn to transport its worshipers to the realm of the happy.

THE END