"That would have counted for nothing. People would not have believed that I had any other motive. I should have declared that it was a love affair."
"What happened?"
"He was too quick for me," mademoiselle admitted. "He saw me feel the spot where the pistol lay concealed. He—he snatched it away."
"And afterwards?" Herr Freudenberg inquired, with the ghost of a smile upon his lips.
She raised her eyes.
"He let me go," she replied. "He threw open the door and he laughed at me. Forgive me, please, if I am sad, if indeed I weep. He was a gallant gentleman."
Herr Freudenberg sighed. Slowly he raised his glass to his lips and drank.
"It is an amiable epitaph," he declared. "Many a man has gone up to Heaven with a worse. Cheer up, my little Marguerite. A year or two more or less in a man's life is no great matter, and after all it was not one warning which this rash man received. You have not yet read the account of the affair."
Mademoiselle slowly withdrew the palm of her hand from the paper. The paragraph was headed: