should be more fresh, more sweet than ever it was, careful that her dress should set it exquisitely off.  Imagine it!  Her lips ready for the kiss!  Oh, how should another woman not know?  I saw Mlle. Celie, her cheeks rosy, her eyes bright.  Never had she looked so lovely.  The pale-green hat upon her fair head heavy with its curls!  From head to foot she looked herself over, and then she sighed—­she sighed with pleasure because she looked so pretty.  That was Mlle. Celie last night, monsieur.  She gathered up her train, took her long white gloves in the other hand, and ran down the stairs, her heels clicking on the wood, her buckles glittering.  At the bottom she turned and said to me: 

“‘Remember, Helene, you can go to bed.’  That was it monsieur.”

And now violently the rancour of Helene Vauquier’s feelings burst out once more.

“For her the fine clothes, the pleasure, and the happiness.  For me—­I could go to bed!”

Hanaud looked again at the description which Helene Vauquier had written out, and read it through carefully.  Then he asked a question, of which Ricardo did not quite see the drift.

“So,” he said, “when this morning you suggested to Monsieur the Commissaire that it would be advisable for you to go through Mlle. Celie’s wardrobe, you found that nothing more had been taken away except the white lace coat?”

“That is so.”

“Very well.  Now, after Mlle. Celie had gone down the stairs—­”

“I put the lights out in her room and, as she had ordered me to do, I went to bed.  The next thing that I remember—­but no!  It terrifies me too much to think of it.”

Helene shuddered and covered her face spasmodically with her hands.  Hanaud drew her hands gently down.

“Courage!  You are safe now, mademoiselle.  Calm yourself!”

She lay back with her eyes closed.

“Yes, yes; it is true.  I am safe now.  But oh!  I feel I shall never dare to sleep again!” And the tears swam in her eyes.  “I woke up with a feeling of being suffocated.  Mon Dieu!  There was the light burning in the room, and a woman, the strange woman with the strong hands, was holding me down by the shoulders, while a man with his cap drawn over his eyes and a little black moustache pressed over my lips a pad from which a horribly sweet and sickly taste filled my mouth.  Oh, I was terrified!  I could not scream.  I struggled.  The woman told me roughly to keep quiet.  But I could not.  I must struggle.  And then with a brutality unheard of she dragged me up on to my knees while the man kept the pad right over my mouth.  The man, with the arm which was free, held me close to him, and she bound my hands with a cord behind me.  Look!”

She held out her wrists.  They were terribly bruised.  Red and angry lines showed where the cord had cut deeply into her flesh.

“Then they flung me down again upon my back, and the next thing I remember is the doctor standing over me and this kind nurse supporting me.”