And I made out enough----" "Ah!" "To be sure that her mother drank it." Blondel stared at him a moment, wide-eyed; then, with a cry of despair, bitter, final, indescribable, the Syndic turned and hurried away.

He did not hear the timid remonstrances which Louis, who followed a few paces behind, ventured to utter.

He did not heed the wondering looks of those whom he jostled as he plunged into the current of passers and thrust his way across the bridge in the direction whence he had come.

The one impulse in his blind brain was to get home, that he might be alone, to think and moan and bewail himself unwatched; even as the first instinct of the wounded beast is to seek its lair and lie hidden, there to await with piteous eyes and the divine patience of animals the coming of death.
But this man had the instinct only, not the patience.

In his case would come with thought wild rages, gnawings of regret, tears of blood.