“It is indeed very strange,” said Deroulede, musing over this extraordinary occurrence, and still more over Anne Mie’s strange excitement in the telling of it.  “I never knew I had a hidden enemy.  I wonder if I shall ever find out...”

“That is just what I said to Citizen Merlin,” rejoined Anne Mie.

“What?”

“That I wondered if you, or—­or any of us who love you, will ever find out who your hidden enemy might be.”

“It was a mistake to talk so fully with such a brute, little one.”

“I didn’t say much, and I thought it wisest to humour him, as he seemed to wish to talk on that subject.”

“Well?  And what did he say?”

“He laughed, and asked me if I would very much like to know.”

“I hope you said No, Anne Mie?”

“Indeed, indeed, I said Yes,” she retorted with sudden energy, her eyes fixed now upon Juliette, who still sat rigid and silent, watching every movement of Anne Mie from the moment in which she began to tell her story.

“Would I not wish to know who is your enemy, Paul—­the creature who was base and treacherous enough to attempt to deliver you into the hands of those merciless villains?  What wrong had you done to anyone?”

“Sh!  Hush, Anne Mie! you are too excited,” he said, smiling now, in spite of himself, at the young girl’s vehemence over what he thought was but a trifle—­the discovery of his own enemy.

“I am sorry, Paul.  How can I help being excited,” rejoined Anne Mie with quaint, pathetic gentleness, “when I speak of such base treachery, as that which Merlin has suggested?”

“Well?  And what did he suggest?”

“He did more than suggest,” whispered Anne Mie almost inaudibly; “he gave me this paper—­the anonymous denunciation which reached the Public Prosecutor this morning—­he thought one of us might recognise the handwriting.”

Then she paused, some five steps away from Deroulede, holding out towards him the crumpled paper, which up to now she had clutched determinedly in her hand.  Deroulede was about to take it from her, and just before he had turned to do so, his eyes lighted on Juliette.

She said nothing, she had merely risen instinctively, and had reached Anne Mie’s side in less than the fraction of a second.

It was all a flash, and there was dead silence in the room, but in that one-hundredth part of a second, Deroulede had read guilt in the face of Juliette.

It was nothing but instinct, a sudden, awful, unexplainable revelation.  Her soul seemed suddenly to stand before him in all its misery and in all its sin.

It was if the fire from heaven had descended in one terrific crash, burying beneath its devastating flames his ideals, his happiness, and his divinity.  She was no longer there.  His madonna had ceased to be.

There stood before him a beautiful woman, on whom he had lavished all the pent-up treasures of his love, whom he had succoured, sheltered, and protected, and who had repaid him thus.