“Well, when you stood at the door, my little shoe in your pocket, when you kissed my hand that first night, when you told me what you would do did you love a woman—­when I saw something new in life I had not seen—­why, then, in the devil’s resolution that no woman in the world should be happy if I could help it, I slipped in the body of the slipper a little line or so that I had written when you did not see, when I was in the other room.  ’Twas that took the place of Van Zandt’s message, after all!  Monsieur, it was fate.  Van Zandt’s letter, without plan, fell out on my table.  Your note, sent by plan, remained in the shoe!”

“And what did it say?  Tell me at once.”

“Very little.  Yet enough fora woman who loved and who expected.  Only this:  ’In spite of that other woman, come to me still.  Who can teach yon love of woman as can I?  Helena.’ I think it was some such words as those.”

I looked at her in silence.

“You did not see that note?” she demanded.  “After all, at first I meant it only for you.  I wanted to see you again.  I did not want to lose you.  Ah, God!  I was so lonely, so—­so—­I can not say.  But you did not find my message?”

I shook my head.  “No,” I said, “I did not look in the slipper.  I do not think my friend did.”

“But she—­that girl, did!”

“How could she have believed?”

“Ah, grand!  I reverence your faith.  But she is a woman!  She loved you and expected you that hour, I say.  Thus comes the shock of finding you untrue, of finding you at least a common man, after all.  She is a woman.  ’Tis the same fight, all the centuries, after all!  Well, I did that.”

“You ruined the lives of two, neither of whom had ever harmed you, Madam.”

“What is it to the tree which consumes another tree—­the flower which devours its neighbor?  Was it not life?”

“You had never seen Elisabeth.”

“Not until the next morning, no.  Then I thought still on what you had said.  I envied her—­I say, I coveted the happiness of you both.  What had the world ever given me?  What had I done—­what had I been—­what could I ever be?  Your messenger came back with the slipper.  The note was in the shoe untouched.  Your messenger had not found it, either.  See, I did mean it for you alone.  But now seine sudden thought came to me.  I tucked it back and sent your drunken friend away with it for her—­where I knew it would be found!  I did not know what would be the result.  I was only desperate over what life had done to me.  I wanted to get out—­out into a wider and brighter world.”

“Ah, Madam, and was so mean a key as this to open that world for you?  Now we all three wander, outside that world.”

“No, it opened no new world for me,” she said.  “I was not meant for that.  But at least, I only acted as I have been treated all my life.  I knew no better then.”

“I had not thought any one capable of that,” said I.