ADOLPHE.  You’ll go away from here?

HENRIETTE.  Yes, I am going—­to where you said.  Good-bye my friend! 
Good-bye, Madame Catherine!

MME. CATHERINE.  Have you to go in such a hurry?

HENRIETTE.  Yes.

ADOLPHE.  Do you want me to go with you?

HENRIETTE.  No, it wouldn’t do.  I am going alone, alone as I came here, one day in Spring, thinking that I belonged where I don’t belong, and believing there was something called freedom, which does not exist.  Good-bye! [Goes out.]

MME. CATHERINE.  I hope that lady never comes back, and I wish she had never come here at all!

ADOLPHE.  Who knows but that she may have had some mission to fill here?  And at any rate she deserves pity, endless pity.

MME. CATHERINE.  I don’t, deny it, for all of us deserve that.

ADOLPHE.  And she has even done less wrong than the rest of us.

MME. CATHERINE.  That’s possible, but not probable.

ADOLPHE.  You are always so severe, Madame Catherine.  Tell me:  have you never done anything wrong?

MME. CATHERINE. [Startled] Of course, as I am a sinful human creature.  But if you have been on thin ice and fallen in, you have a right to tell others to keep away.  And you may do so without being held severe or uncharitable.  Didn’t I say to Monsieur Maurice the moment that lady entered here:  Look out!  Keep away!  And he didn’t, and so he fell in.  Just like a naughty, self-willed child.  And when a man acts like that he has to have a spanking, like any disobedient youngster.

ADOLPHE.  Well, hasn’t he had his spanking?

MME. CATHERINE.  Yes, but it does not seem to have been enough, as he is still going around complaining.

ADOLPHE.  That’s a very popular interpretation of the whole intricate question.

MME. CATHERINE.  Oh, pish!  You do nothing but philosophise about your vices, and while you are still at it the police come along and solve the riddle.  Now please leave me alone with my accounts!

ADOLPHE.  There’s Maurice now.

MME. CATHERINE.  Yes, God bless him!

MAURICE. [Enters, his face very flushed, and takes a seat near
ADOLPHE] Good evening.

(MME. CATHERINE nods and goes on figuring.)

ADOLPHE.  Well, how’s everything with you?

MAURICE.  Oh, beginning to clear up.

ADOLPHE. [Hands him a newspaper, which MAURICE does not take] So you have read the paper?

MAURICE.  No, I don’t read the papers any longer.  There’s nothing but infamies in them.

ADOLPHE.  But you had better read it first—­

MAURICE.  No, I won’t!  It’s nothing but lies—­But listen:  I have found a new clue.  Can you guess who committed that murder?

ADOLPHE.  Nobody, nobody!

MAURICE.  Do you know where Henriette was during that quarter hour when the child was left alone?—­She was there!  And it is she who has done it!