“I went away so excited that I was near drowning myself, and I came back to you expecting that something dreadful was about to happen.

“An hour later, Philippe said to me in a low tone, in the lobby outside the drawing-room where I met him:  ’I am at madame’s orders, if she has any letters to give me.’  Then I knew that he had sold himself, and that my lover had bought him.

“I gave him some letters, in fact—­all my letters—­he took them away, and brought me back the answers.

“This lasted about two months.  We had confidence in him, as you had confidence in him yourself.

“Now, father, here is what happened.  One day, in the same isle which I had to reach by swimming, but this time alone, I found your orderly.  This man had been waiting for me; and he informed me that he was going to reveal everything about us to you, and deliver to you the letters which he had kept, stolen, if I did not yield to his desires.

“Oh! father, father, I was filled with fear—­a cowardly fear, an unworthy fear, a fear above all of you who had been so good to me, and whom I had deceived—­fear on his account too—­you would have killed him—­for myself also perhaps!  I cannot tell; I was mad, desperate; I thought of once more buying this wretch who loved me, too—­how shameful!

“We are so weak, we women, we lose our heads more easily than you do.  And then, when a woman once falls, she always falls lower and lower.  Did I know what I was doing?  I understood only that one of you two and I were going to die—­and I gave myself to this brute.

“You see, father, that I do not seek to excuse myself.

“Then, then—­then what I should have foreseen happened—­he had the better of me again and again, when he wished, by terrifying me.  He, too, has been my lover, like the other, every day.  Is not this abominable?  And what punishment, father?

“So then it is all over with me.  I must die.  While I lived, I could not confess such a crime to you.  Dead, I dare everything.  I could not do otherwise than die—­nothing could have washed me clean—­I was too polluted.  I could no longer love or be loved.  It seemed to me that I stained everyone by merely allowing my hand to be touched.

“Presently I am going to take my bath, and I will never come back.

“This letter for you will go to my lover.  It will reach him when I am dead, and without anyone knowing anything about it, he will forward it to you, accomplishing my last wishes.  And you shall read it on your return from the cemetery.

“Adieu, father!  I have no more to tell you.  Do whatever you wish, and forgive me.”

* * * * *

The colonel wiped his forehead, which was covered with perspiration.  His coolness; the coolness of days when he had stood on the field of battle, suddenly came back to him.  He rang.

A man-servant made his appearance.  “Send in Philippe to me,” said he.  Then, he opened the drawer of his table.