He spent a week at an inn. He did not know where to go. . . . What was he to do? What was there for him to cling to? He was tired of life. He did not want to live. . . .
"Is that you?"
Mme. Ernemont stood in her little sitting-room in the villa at Garches, trembling, scared and livid, staring at the apparition that faced her.
Lupin! . . . It was Lupin.
"You!" she said. "You! . . . But the papers said . . ."
He smiled sadly:
"Yes, I am dead."
"Well, then . . . well, then . . ." she said, naïvely.
"You mean that, if I am dead, I have no business here. Believe me, I have serious reasons, Victoire."