“Is there any doubt about it?” pursued the judge pitilessly.  “And I have only read two bits from two letters.  There are many others.  Now I want the truth about this business.  Come, the quickest way will be the easiest.”

He took out his watch and laid it on the desk before him.  “Madam, I will give you five minutes.  Unless you admit within that time what is perfectly evident, namely, that you were this man’s mistress, I shall continue the reading of these letters before your husband.”

“You’re taking a cowardly advantage of a woman!” she burst out.

“No,” answered Hauteville sternly.  “I am investigating a cowardly murder.”  He glanced at his watch.  “Four minutes!”

Then to Kittredge:  “And unless you admit this thing, I shall summon the girl from Notre-Dame and let her say what she thinks of this correspondence.”

Lloyd staggered under the blow.  He was fortified against everything but this; he would endure prison, pain, humiliation, but he could not bear the thought that this fine girl, his Alice, who had taught him what love really was, this fond creature who trusted him, should be forced to hear that shameful reading.

“You wouldn’t do that?” he pleaded.  “I don’t ask you to spare me—­I’ve been no saint, God knows, and I’ll take my medicine, but you can’t drag an innocent girl into this thing just because you have the power.”

“Were you this woman’s lover?” repeated the judge, and again he looked at his watch.  “Three minutes!”

Kittredge was in torture.  Once his eyes turned to Mrs. Wilmott in a message of unspeakable bitterness.  “You’re a judge,” he said in a strained, tense voice, “and I’m a prisoner; you have all the power and I have none, but there’s something back of that, something we both have, I mean a common manhood, and you know, if you have any sense of honor, that no man has a right to ask another man that question.”

“The point is well taken,” approved Maitre Pleindeaux.

“Two minutes!” said Hauteville coldly.  Then he turned to Mrs. Wilmott.  “Your husband is now at his club, one of our men is there also, awaiting my orders.  He will get them by telephone, and will bring your husband here in a swift automobile. You have one minute left!”

Then there was silence in that dingy chamber, heavy, agonizing silence.  Fifteen seconds!  Thirty seconds!  The judge’s eye was on his watch.  Now his arm reached toward the electric bell, and Pussy Wilmott’s heart almost stopped beating.  Now his firm red finger advanced toward the white button.

Then she yielded.  “Stop!” came her low cry.  “He—­he was my lover.”

“That is better!” said the judge, and the scratching of the greffier’s pen recorded unalterably Mrs. Wilmott’s avowal.