Neither of the two adversaries showed a trace of nervousness.  The signal was given, M. De Villacourt advanced five steps, Henri remaining stationary.  At the sixth step Henri fired, and his opponent fell.  Henri hurried towards him.

“Back to your place,” shouted the wounded man.  On his hands and knees he crawled forward to the limit of his advance leaving a trail of blood in the snow.  Then he took careful aim—­and Henri fell with arms extended and his face towards the ground.

IV.—­Broken Wanderers

To Denoisel fell the painful duty of informing Mauperin of his son’s death.  The old man’s grief was heartbreaking.  When Denoisel was admitted to Renee, he found her sitting on a footstool, sobbing, with her handkerchief pressed to her mouth.

“Renee,” he said, taking her hands, “he has been killed—­that man should never have known.  He did not read, he saw nobody, he lived like a wolf—­he was not a subscriber to the ‘Moniteur.’  Some enemy must have sent him that paper.”

Renee had risen; she moved her lips; she wanted to scream “It was I!” Then, suddenly pressing her hand against her heart, she fell senseless on the floor.

* * * * *

Renee did not seem to recover from her illness.  Denoisel saw her daily, but a certain coldness had set in between them—­he thought that Renee held him responsible for not having prevented the duel, while Renee vaguely feared that Denoisel had guessed her secret.  He started upon a long journey.

In those days of illness and anxiety the hearts of father and daughter seemed to come together more closely even than before.  The heartbroken old man saw his beloved child wasting away.  He called in the best specialist from Paris, who did not exactly give up all hope, but did not conceal that Renee’s life was in danger.  The poor girl, who could not bear to witness her father’s misery, put on a gay air, assuring him again and again that she was recovering.  Indeed, when, at her urging, the family removed to the country house where she had spent her childhood, there was a real and marked improvement, and for a while the roses seemed to return to her pale cheeks.

But she soon fell back into her listless state.  Thus she lingered on for several months, always cheering her father and speaking of her happy future, always fading away until she became a mere shadow of her former bright and healthy self.  Only to Denoisel, when after a long absence he returned from the Pyrenees, she opened her heart.  To him she confessed that she knew her days were counted.

Those who travel far afield have perhaps met in foreign towns or among the ruins of dead places—­now in Russia, now in Egypt—­two aged people, a man and a woman, who seem to march along without looking and without seeing.  They are the Mauperins—­father and mother.

They have sold everything and have gone.  Thus they wander from land to land, from hotel to hotel.  They wander, trying to lose their grief in the fatigue of the road, dragging their weary life to all the corners of the globe.