Now it was the mark of the gunshot wound, the _coup de grace_ that brought the death-agony of the executed girl to its end.
Poor Freya, implacable warrior, unnerved by the battle of the sexes!...
She had passed her existence hating men yet needing them in order to live,--doing them all the harm possible and receiving it from them in sad reciprocity until finally she had perished at their hands.
It could not end in any other way.

A masculine hand had opened the orifice through which was escaping the last bubble of her existence....
And the horrified captain, poring over her sad profile with its purpling temple, thought that he never would be able to blot that ghastly vision from his memory.

The phantasm would diminish, becoming invisible in order to deceive him, but would surely come forth again in all his hours of pensive solitude; it was going to embitter his nights on watch, to follow him through the years like remorse.
Fortunately the exactions of real life kept repelling these sad memories.
"It was a good thing she was shot!" affirmed authoritatively within him the energetic official accustomed to command men.

"What would you have done in forming a part of the tribunal that condemned her ?...

Just what the others did.