Was she going to defend them?  Was she yielding to a scruple of conscience at the moment when her obstinacy and duplicity were on the point of causing her to sacrifice a set of servants whose conduct she knew to be beyond reproach?  Don Luis received the impression that the glance which she threw at him contained an appeal for pity.  But pity for whom?  For the others?  Or for herself?

They were silent for a long time.  Don Luis, standing a few steps away from her, thought of the photograph, and was surprised to find in the real woman all the beauty of the portrait, all that beauty which he had not observed hitherto, but which now struck him as a revelation.  The golden hair shone with a brilliancy unknown to him.  The mouth wore a less happy expression, perhaps, a rather bitter expression, but one which nevertheless retained the shape of the smile.  The curve of the chin, the grace of the neck revealed above the dip of the linen collar, the line of the shoulders, the position of the arms, and of the hands resting on her knees:  all this was charming and very gentle and, in a manner, very seemly and reassuring.  Was it possible that this woman should be a murderess, a poisoner?

He said: 

“I forget what you told me that your Christian name was.  But the name you gave me was not the right one.”

“Yes, it was,” she said.

“Your name is Florence:  Florence Levasseur.”

She started.

“What!  Who told you?  Florence?  How do you know?”

“Here is your photograph, with your name on it almost illegible.”

“Oh!” she said, amazed at seeing the picture.  “I can’t believe it!  Where does it come from?  Where did you get it from?” And, suddenly, “It was the Prefect of Police who gave it to you, was it not?  Yes, it was he, I’m sure of it.  I am sure that this photograph is to identify me and that they are looking for me, for me, too.  And it’s you again, it’s you again—­”

“Have no fear,” he said.  “The print only wants a few touches to alter the face beyond recognition.  I will make them.  Have no fear.”

She was no longer listening to him.  She gazed at the photograph with all her concentrated attention and murmured: 

“I was twenty years old....  I was living in Italy.  Dear me, how happy I was on the day when it was taken!  And how happy I was when I saw my portrait!...  I used to think myself pretty in those days....  And then it disappeared....  It was stolen from me like other things that had already been stolen from me, at that time—­”

And, sinking her voice still lower, speaking her name as if she were addressing some other woman, some unhappy friend, she repeated: 

“Florence....  Florence—­”

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“She is not one of those who kill,” thought Don Luis.  “I can’t believe that she is an accomplice.  And yet—­and yet—­”

He moved away from her and walked across the room from the window to the door.  The drawings of Italian landscapes on the wall attracted his attention.  Next, he read the titles of the books on the shelves.  They represented French and foreign works, novels, plays, essays, volumes of poetry, pointing to a really cultivated and varied taste.