Ah! the Morgue! Blessed idea! That should be the end of her. A moment's struggle, and then—the rose-window of heaven! Hell? No, no; the Madonna would plead for her; she who always looked so beautiful, so convenable.
She would peep in. Let her see how she would look when they found her. Would they clap a grey wig upon her, or expose her humiliation even in death?
"A-a-a-h!" A long scream tore her lips apart. There, behind the glass, in terrible waxen peace, a gash on her forehead, lay the "Princess," so uncanny-looking without any wig at all, that she would not have recognised her but for that moment of measurement at the hairdresser's. She fell sobbing before the cold glass wall of the death-chamber. Ah, God! Her first fear had been right; her brooch had but added to the murderer's temptation. And she had just traduced this martyred saint to the police.
"Forgive me, ma chérie, forgive me," she moaned, not even conscious that the attendant was lifting her to her feet with professional interest.
For in that instant everything passed from her but the great yearning for love and reconciliation, and for the first time a grey wig seemed a petty and futile aspiration.