Compared to Lake George, which wound like a river, and the mighty St. Lawrence as I remembered it, the Seine was a narrow stream.  Some boats made constellations on the surface.  The mass of island splitting it into two branches was almost the heart of Paris.  There were other foot passengers on the bridge, and a gay carriage rolled by.  I did not see any gendarmes, and only one foot passenger troubled me.

I was on the bridge above the left arm of the river when an ear trained in the woods caught his footstep, pausing as mine paused, and hurrying as mine hurried.  If the sacristan had been found in Ste. Pelagie a pursuer would not track me so delicately, and neither would Skenedonk hold back on the trail.  I stopped in the shade when we two were alone on the second span, and wheeled, certain of catching my man under the flare of a cresset.  I caught him, and knew that it was Bellenger following me.

My mind was made up in an instant.  I walked back to settle matters with him, though slaughter was far from my thoughts.  I had done him no harm; but he was my enemy, and should be forced to let me alone.

The fellow who had appeared so feeble at his cabin that I opened the door for him, and so poor-spirited that his intellect claimed pity, stood up as firm as a bear at my approach, and met my eyes with perfect understanding.

Not another thing do I remember.  The facts are simply these:  I faced Bellenger; no blows passed; my mind flashed blank with the partial return of that old eclipse which has fallen upon me after strong excitement, in more than one critical moment.  The hiatus seems brief when I awake though it may have lasted hours.  I know the eclipse has been upon me, like the wing-shadow of eternity; but I have scarcely let go of time.

I could not prove that Bellenger dragged me to the parapet and threw me into the river.  If I had known it I should have laughed at his doing so, for I could swim like a fish, through or under water, and sit on the lake bottom holding my breath until Skenedonk had been known to dive for me.

When next I sensed anything at all it was a feeling of cold.

I thought I was lying in one of the shallow runlets that come into Lake George, and the pebbles were an uneasy bed, chilling my shoulders.  I was too stiff to move, or even turn my head to lift out of water the ear on which it rested.  But I could unclose my eyelids, and this is what I saw:—­a man naked to his waist, half reclining against a leaning slab of marble, down which a layer of water constantly moved.  His legs were clothed, and his other garments lay across them.  His face had sagged in my direction.  There was a deep slash across his forehead, and he showed his teeth and his glassy eyes at the joke.

Beyond this silent figure was a woman as silent.  The ridge of his body could not hide the long hair spread upon her breast.  I considered the company and the moisture into which I had fallen with unspeakable amazement.  We were in a low and wide stone chamber with a groined ceiling, supported by stone pillars.  A row of lamps was arranged above us, so that no trait or feature might escape a beholder.