loved?  Yes, I really quarrelled with him, and said things which I thought and hoped would hurt.  Then I ran away from him lest I should break down and cry.  I went to the tables and lost at once all the money I had except one note of five louis.  But that did not console me.  And I ran out into the garden, very unhappy.  There I behaved like a child, and Mr. Ricardo saw me.  But it was not the little money I had lost which troubled me; no, it was the thought of what a coward I was.  Afterwards Harry and I made it up, and I thought, like the little fool I was, that he wanted to ask me to marry him.  But I would not let him that night.  Oh!  I wanted him to ask me—­I was longing for him to ask me—­but not that night.  Somehow I felt that the seance and the tricks must be all over and done with before I could listen or answer.”

The quiet and simple confession touched the magistrate who listened to it with profound pity.  He shaded his eyes with his hand.  The girl’s sense of her unworthiness, the love she had given so unstintingly to Harry Wethermill, the deep pride she had felt in the delusion that he loved her too, had in it an irony too bitter.  But he was aroused to anger against the man.

“Go on, mademoiselle,” he said.  But in spite of himself his voice trembled.

“So I arranged with him that we should meet on Wednesday, as Mr. Ricardo heard.”

“You told him that you would ‘want him’ on Wednesday,” said the Judge quoting Mr. Ricardo’s words.

“Yes,” replied Celia.  “I meant that the last word of all these deceptions would have been spoken.  I should be free to hear what he had to say to me.  You see, monsieur, I was so sure that I knew what it was he had to say to me—­“and her voice broke upon the words.  She recovered herself with an effort.  “Then I went home with Mme. Dauvray.”

On the morning of Tuesday, however, there came a letter from Adele Tace, of which no trace was afterwards discovered.  The letter invited Mme. Dauvray and Celia to come out to Annecy and dine with her at an hotel there.  They could then return together to Aix.  The proposal fitted well with Mme. Dauvray’s inclinations.  She was in a feverish mood of excitement.

“Yes, it will be better that we dine quietly together in a place where there is no noise and no crowd, and where no one knows us,” she said; and she looked up the time-table.  “There is a train back which reaches Aix at nine o’clock,” she said, “so we need not spoil Servettaz’ holiday.”

“His parents will be expecting him,” Helene Vauquier added.

Accordingly Servettaz left for Chambery by the 1.50 train from Aix; and later on in the afternoon Mme. Dauvray and Celia went by train to Annecy.  In the one woman’s mind was the queer longing that “she” should appear and speak to-night; in the girl’s there was a wish passionate as a cry.  “This shall be the last time,” she said to herself again and again—­“the very last.”