.

THE ARREST.
It had come, and I saw no way of escape.

The sergeant was between us and I could not strike him.

And I found no words.

A score of times I had thought with shrinking how I should reveal my secret to Mademoiselle--what I should say, and how she would take it; but in my mind it had been always a voluntary act, this disclosure, it had been always I who unmasked myself and she who listened--alone; and in this voluntariness and this privacy there had been something which took from the shame of anticipation.