circle in which we move, as was the first. At the same time I was
receiving letters from my poor wife, and all coincided, in the terrible
series, in a frightful concordance. The anonymous letter told me: 'To-
day they were together two hours and a quarter,' while Maud wrote: 'I
could not go out to-day, as agreed upon, with Madame Steno, for she had a
headache.' Then the portrait of Alba, of which they told me incidentally.
The anonymous letters detailed to me the events, the prolongation of
sitting, while my wife wrote: 'We again went to see Alba's portrait
yesterday. The painter erased what he had done.' Finally it became
impossible for me to endure it. With their abominable minuteness of
detail, the anonymous letters gave me even the address of their
rendezvous! I set out. I said to myself, 'If I announce my arrival to
my wife they will find it out, they will escape me.' I intended to
surprise them. I wanted--Do I know what I wanted? I wanted to suffer no
longer the agony of uncertainty. I took the train. I stopped neither
day nor night. I left my valet yesterday in Florence, and this morning
I was in Rome.

"My plan was made on the way. I would hire apartments near theirs,
in the same street, perhaps in the same house. I would watch them, one,
two days, a week. And then--would you believe it? It was in the cab
which was bearing me directly toward that street that I saw suddenly,
clearly within me, and that I was startled. I had my hand upon this
revolver." He drew the weapon from his pocket and laid it upon the
divan, as if he wished to repulse any new temptation. "I saw myself as
plainly as I see you, killing those two beings like two animals, should
I surprise them. At the same time I saw my son and my wife. Between
murder and me there was, perhaps, just the distance which separated me
from the street, and I felt that it was necessary to fly at once--to fly
that street, to fly from the guilty ones, if they were really guilty; to