one awful puzzle, the answer to which must be found in the brief
interval between the swift passages of death.

Armand St. Just, having settled his few simple belongings in the
squalid lodgings which had been assigned to him, had started out
after dark to wander somewhat aimlessly through the streets.
Instinctively he seemed to be searching for a familiar face, some
one who would come to him out of that merry past which he had
spent with Marguerite in their pretty apartment in the Rue St.
Honore.

For an hour he wandered thus and met no one whom he knew. At times
it appeared to him as if he did recognise a face or figure that
passed him swiftly by in the gloom, but even before he could fully
make up his mind to that, the face or figure had already disappeared,
gliding furtively down some narrow unlighted by-street, without
turning to look to right or left, as if dreading fuller recognition.
Armand felt a total stranger in his own native city.

The terrible hours of the execution on the Place de la Revolution
were fortunately over, the tumbrils no longer rattled along the
uneven pavements, nor did the death-cry of the unfortunate victims
resound through the deserted streets. Armand was, on this first
day of his arrival, spared the sight of this degradation of the
once lovely city; but her desolation, her general appearance of
shamefaced indigence and of cruel aloofness struck a chill in the
young man's heart.

It was no wonder, therefore, when anon he was wending his way
slowly back to his lodging he was accosted by a pleasant, cheerful