“What do you mean?” I interrupted, puzzled.  “Was it Sevrin, then, who was—­”

“He was.  The most persistent, the most dangerous, the craftiest, the most systematic of informers.  A genius amongst betrayers.  Fortunately for us, he was unique.  The man was a fanatic, I have told you.  Fortunately, again, for us, he had fallen in love with the accomplished and innocent gestures of that girl.  An actor in desperate earnest himself, he must have believed in the absolute value of conventional signs.  As to the grossness of the trap into which he fell, the explanation must be that two sentiments of such absorbing magnitude cannot exist simultaneously in one heart.  The danger of that other and unconscious comedian robbed him of his vision, of his perspicacity, of his judgment.  Indeed, it did at first rob him of his self-possession.  But he regained that through the necessity—­as it appeared to him imperiously—­to do something at once.  To do what?  Why, to get her out of the house as quickly as possible.  He was desperately anxious to do that.  I have told you he was terrified.  It could not be about himself.  He had been surprised and annoyed at a move quite unforeseen and premature.  I may even say he had been furious.  He was accustomed to arrange the last scene of his betrayals with a deep, subtle art which left his revolutionist reputation untouched.  But it seems clear to me that at the same time he had resolved to make the best of it, to keep his mask resolutely on.  It was only with the discovery of her being in the house that everything—­the forced calm, the restraint of his fanaticism, the mask—­all came off together in a kind of panic.  Why panic, do you ask?  The answer is very simple.  He remembered—­or, I dare say, he had never forgotten—­the Professor alone at the top of the house, pursuing his researches, surrounded by tins upon tins of Stone’s Dried Soup.  There was enough in some few of them to bury us all where we stood under a heap of bricks.  Sevrin, of course, was aware of that.  And we must believe, also, that he knew the exact character of the man.  He had gauged so many such characters!  Or perhaps he only gave the Professor credit for what he himself was capable of.  But, in any case, the effect was produced.  And suddenly he raised his voice in authority.

“‘Get the lady away at once.’

“It turned out that he was as hoarse as a crow; result, no doubt, of the intense emotion.  It passed off in a moment.  But these fateful words issued forth from his contracted throat in a discordant, ridiculous croak.  They required no answer.  The thing was done.  However, the man personating the inspector judged it expedient to say roughly: 

“‘She shall go soon enough, together with the rest of you.’

“These were the last words belonging to the comedy part of this affair.

“Oblivious of everything and everybody, Sevrin strode towards him and seized the lapels of his coat.  Under his thin bluish cheeks one could see his jaws working with passion.