"I don't understand you, madame. You treat the loss of jewels as if it
must be a secret private to ourselves, to you and to me!"

"Possibly that is my wish, monsieur." He gave a gesture of
bewilderment. "Perhaps," she continued, meeting his blank stare with
eyes in which amusement gave place to a look almost apologetic yet
utterly kind--"perhaps I have more faith in you..."

Duchemin bowed his head over hands so tightly knitted that the knuckles
were white with strain.

"You would not have faith," he said in a low voice, "if you knew--"

She interrupted in a gentle voice: "Are you sure?"

"--What I must tell you!"

"My friend," she said: "tell me nothing that would distress you."

He did not immediately reply; the struggle going on within him was only
too plainly betrayed by engorged veins upon his forehead and exceeding
pallor of countenance.

"If you had told those detectives," he said at length, without looking
up, "you must have known very soon. They must have found me out without
too much delay. And who in the world would ever believe anybody else
guilty when they learned that André Duchemin, your guest for three
weeks, was only an alias for Michael Lanyard, otherwise the Lone Wolf?"

"But you are wrong, monsieur," she replied, without the long pause of