"'I should be delighted to treat you as a prisoner. Unfortunately it appears that it is as a prisoner you are treating me.'
"'Your crimes, I do not doubt, they are as black as ink! A woman who can be as false as you--to such a woman nothing is impossible.'
"'Baron d'Ardigny, I do not know how this sort of thing is done in Belgium, but in England when they lock a person up they tell him what they lock him up for. With you, has a policeman the power of taking a person to the stationhouse for the sole purpose and pleasure of calling them names?'
"'Mees Nash----'
"'I have already informed you that I am Mrs. Godwin.'
"'So you are Mrs. Godwin! You insist! Well! At last we have arrived! Meez-sers Godwin, I tell you this. Mark carefully; I meet your husband once--for a moment. A second time--for ever--upon the field of honour.'
"I do not know if abroad policemen always speak to their prisoners as the Baron spoke to me. The inhabitants of those countries must enjoy themselves if they do. For my part, although my situation was sufficiently critical, it was all I could do to refrain from laughter. If you could only have seen how funny he looked! I do not know if he mistook my silence for admiration, but on a sudden his madness assumed a dreadful phase. He threw himself into an attitude--ask Geraldine if she has forgotten his attitudes--and apostrophised me thus: 'When I look upon that lovely face, upon those eyes of perfect blue, upon that hair of gold, upon that figure exquisite, I say to myself, "Hector, Hector d'Ardigny! you who has not been without his fortunate experience, is it possible that you cannot win the love of a creature so divine?" I answer to myself, "It is impossible."'
"I hesitated for a moment what, under the circumstances, I had better do. I saw plainly that it was no use to talk to the man. I arrived at a sudden resolution. I decided that I would try--as they say in the cookery-books--another way. As he stood with his eyes and hands raised towards the ceiling I went and I took him by the thing inside the collar of his coat--stock, I think they call it--and I shook him. I do not think he ever had a better shaking in his life. I kept at it till the thing inside the collar of his coat came loose in my hand. Then--you know he is such a little man--I lifted him off his feet and seated him on the edge of the table. The rest was silence. He looked at me, and I, for my part, looked at him.
"'Now,' I said, when I began to feel a little cooler, 'perhaps you will tell me what I am here for?'
"'Apparently,' he gasped--the little man was breathless--'to murder me.'