“There is no need,” he said, as Rufin groped in his pockets for the permit with which he had been provided.  “I have been warned to expect Monsieur Rufin and the lady, and I congratulate myself on the honor of receiving them.”

“He knows we are coming?” asked Rufin.

“Yes, he knows,” replied the other.  “At this moment his toilet is being made.”  He sank his voice so that the mute, abstracted girl should not overhear.  “The hair above the neck, you know—­they always shave that off.  It might be better that mademoiselle should not see.”

“Possibly,” agreed Rufin, looking absently at his comely, insignificant face, which the lamps illuminated mercilessly.

The girl stood with her hands loosely joined before her, and her thin face vacant, staring, as though in a mood of deep thought, along the bare passage.  Suddenly she addressed the officer.

“How long shall I be with him,” she inquired, in tones of an almost arrogant composure, “before they cut his head off?”

The words, in their matter-of-fact directness, no less than the tone, seemed to startle the officer.

“Ah, Mademoiselle!” he protested, as though at an indelicacy or an accusation.

“How long?” repeated the girl.

“Kindly tell mademoiselle what she wishes to know,” directed Rufin.

The officer hesitated.  “It does not rest with me,” he said uncomfortably.  “You see, there is a regular course in these matters, a routine.  I hope mademoiselle will have not less than ten minutes.”

The girl looked at Rufin and made a face.  It was as though she had been overcharged in a shop; she invited him, it seemed, to take note of a trivial imposture.  Her manner and gesture had the repressed power of under-expression.  He nodded to her in entire comprehension.

“But,” began the officer excitedly, “how can I——­” Rufin turned on him gravely, a somber, august figure of reproof.

“Sir,” he said, “you are in the presence of a tragedy.  I beg you to be silent.”

The officer made a hopeless gesture; the shadow of it fled grotesquely up the walls.

A few moments later the summons came that took them along the passage to an open door, giving on to a room brilliant with lights and containing a number of people.  At the farther end of it a table against the wall had been converted into a sort of altar, with wan candles alight upon it, and there was a robed priest among the uniformed men.  Those by the door parted to make way for them.  Rufin saw them salute him, and removed his hat.

Somebody was speaking.  “Regret we cannot leave you alone, but——­”