“We came back here.  Florence refused to lay down her arms and begged me not to carry out my plan before your new attitude in the case was confirmed by deeds.  I promised everything that she asked.  But my mind was made up.  And my will was still further strengthened when I had read your declaration in the newspaper.  I would place Marie’s fate in your hands whatever happened and without an hour’s delay, I waited for your return and came up here.”

He was no longer the same man who had displayed such coolness at the commencement of the interview.  Exhausted by his efforts and by a struggle that had lasted for weeks, costing him so much fruitless energy, he was now trembling; and clinging to Don Luis, with one of his knees on the chair beside which Don Luis was standing, he stammered: 

“Save her, I implore you!  You have it in your power.  Yes, you can do anything.  I learnt to know you in fighting you.  There was more than your genius defending you against me; there is a luck that protects you.  You are different from other men.  Why, the mere fact of your not killing me at once, though I had pursued you so savagely, the fact of your listening to the inconceivable truth of the innocence of all three of us and accepting it as admissible, surely these constitute an unprecedented miracle.

“While I was waiting for you and preparing to speak to you, I received an intuition of it all!” he exclaimed.  “I saw clearly that the man who was proclaiming Marie’s innocence with nothing to guide him but his reason, I saw that this man alone could save her and that he would save her.  Ah, I beseech you, save her—­and save her at once.  Otherwise it will be too late.

“In a few days Marie will have ended her life.  She cannot go on living in prison.  You see, she means to die.  No obstacle can prevent her.  Can any one be prevented from committing suicide?  And how horrible if she were to die!...  Oh, if the law requires a criminal I will confess anything that I am asked to.  I will joyfully accept every charge and pay every penalty, provided that Marie is free!  Save her!...  I did not know, I do not yet know the best thing to be done!  Save her from prison and death, save her, for God’s sake, save her!”

Tears flowed down his anguish-stricken face.  Florence also was crying, bowed down with sorrow.  And Perenna suddenly felt the most terrible dread steal over him.

Although, ever since the beginning of the interview, a fresh conviction had gradually been mastering him, it was only as it were a glance that he became aware of it.  Suddenly he perceived that his belief in Sauverand’s words was unrestricted, and that Florence was perhaps not the loathsome creature that he had had the right to think, but a woman whose eyes did not lie and whose face and soul were alike beautiful.

Suddenly he learnt that the two people before him, as well as Marie Fauville, for love of whom they had fought so unskilful a fight, were imprisoned in an iron circle which their efforts would not succeed in breaking.  And that circle traced by an unknown hand he, Perenna, had drawn tighter around them with the most ruthless determination.