fireplace, he heard Madame Dammauville say to her maid:

"Remain in the salon, and tell the cook not to go to bed."

What did this mean? Was she afraid that he would cut her throat?

"Will you come close to my bed?" she said. "It is important that we
should talk without raising our voices."

He took a chair and seated himself at a certain distance from the bed,
and in such a way that he was beyond the circle of light thrown by the
lamp. Then he waited.

A moment of silence, which he found terribly long, slipped away before
she spoke.

"You know," she said at last, "how I saw, accidentally, from this place"
--she pointed to one of the windows--" the face of the assassin of my
unfortunate tenant, Monsieur Caffie."

"Mademoiselle Cormier has told me," he replied in a tone of ordinary
conversation.

"Perhaps you are astonished that at such a distance I saw the face
clearly enough to recognize it after five months, as if it were still
before me."

"It is extraordinary."

"Not to those who have a memory for faces and attitudes; with me this