suede shoes were brought to him from the hall.

"See, M. Hanaud, it is a pretty little foot which made those clear
impressions," he said, with a smile; "a foot arched and slender.
Mme. Dauvray's foot is short and square, the maid's broad and
flat. Neither Mme. Dauvray nor Helene Vauquier could have worn
these shoes. They were lying, one here, one there, upon the floor
of Celie Harland's room, as though she had kicked them off in a
hurry. They are almost new, you see. They have been worn once,
perhaps, no more, and they fit with absolute precision into those
footmarks, except just at the toe of that second one."

Hanaud took the shoes and, kneeling down, placed them one after
the other over the impressions. To Ricardo it was extraordinary
how exactly they covered up the marks and filled the indentations.

"I should say," said the Commissaire, "that Celie Harland went
away wearing a new pair of shoes made on the very same last as
those."

As those she had left carelessly lying on the floor of her room
for the first person to notice, thought Ricardo! It seemed as if
the girl had gone out of her way to make the weight of evidence
against her as heavy as possible. Yet, after all, it was just
through inattention to the small details, so insignificant at the
red moment of crime, so terribly instructive the next day, that
guilt was generally brought home.

Hanaud rose to his feet and handed the shoes back to the officer.