Saniel hesitated a moment.

“Well, I will go,” he said.  “Not this evening, it is too late, but tomorrow.”

“Oh, dear Victor!” she exclaimed, pressing him in her arms, “I knew that you would save him.  We will owe you his life, as we owe you mamma’s, as I owe you happiness.  Am I not right to say you are my God?”

After she was gone he had a moment of repentance in which he regretted this weakness; for it was a weakness, a stupid sentimentalism, unworthy of a sensible man, who should not permit himself to be thus touched and involved.  Why should he go and invite danger when he could be quiet, without any one giving him a thought?  Was it not folly?  The law wanted a criminal.  Public curiosity demanded one.  Why take away the one that they had?  If he succeeded, would they not look for another?  It was imprudence, and, to use the true word, madness.  Now that he was no longer under the influence of Phillis’s beautiful, tearful eyes, he would not commit this imprudence.  All the evening this idea strengthened, and when he went to bed his resolution was taken.  He would not go to the judge.

But on awakening, he was surprised to find that this resolution of the evening was not that of the morning, and that this dual personality, which had already struck him, asserted itself anew.  It was at night that he resolved to kill Caffie, and he committed the deed in the evening.  It was in the morning that he had abandoned the idea, as it was in the morning that he revoked the decision made the previous evening not to go to the rescue of this poor boy.  Of what then, was the will of man made, undulating like the sea, and variable as the wind, that he had the folly to believe his was firm?

At noon he went to the Palais de justice and sent in his card to the judge, on which he wrote these words:  “Regarding the Caffie affair.”

He was received almost immediately, and briefly explained how, according to his opinion, Caffie was killed quickly and suddenly by a firm and skilful hand, that of a killer by profession.

“That is the conclusion of your report,” the judge said.

“What I could not point out in my report, as I did not know of the finding of the button and the opinion it has led to, is that there was no struggle between the assassin and the victim, as is generally supposed.”

And medically he demonstrated how this struggle was impossible.

The judge listened attentively, without a word, without interruption.

“Do you know this young man?” he asked.

“I have seen him only once; but I know his mother, who was my patient, and it is at her instigation that I decided to make this explanation to you.”

“Without doubt, it has its value, but I must tell you that it tends in no way to destroy our hypothesis.”

“But if it has no foundation?”

“I must tell you that you are negative, doctor, and not suggestive.  We have a criminal and you have not.  Do you see one?”