“Yes.”
“Your wife?”
“She had promised to become my wife,” and Stewart looked at the other, steadily.
“You are an American, are you not?”
“Yes—I have my passport.”
“And Madame—was she also an American?”
“No—she was a Frenchwoman. She was shot twice in the leg as we ran toward your barricade—seriously—it was quite impossible for her to walk. But when I got back to the house, she was not there. What had happened to her?”
His companion gazed out over the meadows and shook his head.
“You looked in the other rooms?” he asked.
“Everywhere—all through the house—she was not there! Ah, and I remember now,” he added, struggling to a sitting posture, his face more livid, if possible, than it had been before. “There was a great bloodstain on the floor that was not there when I left her. How could it have got there? I cannot understand!”