CHAPTER XXXVIII

For awhile she lay motionless, half stunned by the force of the explosion. When full consciousness returned to her the firing had grown fainter, more infrequent. She rose to her feet and went to the window. Out in the courtyard a great hole gaped where the shell had struck. Glass from the windows lay scattered about, a garden bench was splintered and overturned. Havoc and ruin stared back at her. Had Madame and the rest escaped? Or had they been killed, and she, alone, left untouched?

She stood in the center of the room, dazed, her fingers clutching nervously, her chin quivering. It seemed years ago that she had arrived here with Gerome to be in the shelter of his home, to be with his people in her hour of need, and now she was alone.

She seemed to see France, like the bleeding body of a woman, lying dead at her feet. Her wild eyes visioned Gerome's white, upturned face, staring vacantly at the sky he loved. She tore at her breast, panting for breath.

"God! God!" she cried. "What have I left in all the world? Why am I not lying out there with Gerome? Gerome, I will not go on without you, I can't!"

She stopped her hysterical crying. Her hands dropped to her sides, her mouth set. She remembered seeing a pistol in the drawer of the little desk when the General had opened it searching for some papers.

She walked slowly toward it now as though propelled by some force outside of herself. With shaking fingers she pulled open the drawer and for a moment stared down at the weapon. After a hesitating effort she forced herself to pick it up, but the touch of the steel set her trembling.

"It's cold," she shuddered. "It's horrible," and then after a moment she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer for strength.

Her pitiful weakness disgusted her. With nothing left to live for she was even afraid to die. Slowly she raised the pistol to her heart, her eyes tightly shut, her lips pressed in a stiff blue line.

Suddenly she stopped, her eyes sprang open. Footsteps were coming up the path, running, stumbling, heavy footsteps. Marie wheeled, the hand with the pistol hidden behind her back.

Someone came through the outer door and crossed the hall. She backed against the wall, her hand still behind her. The door was kicked open. A man stood on the threshold, dusty, bloody, spent with running. His face was twisted with hate, his lips drawn back from his teeth.

"You!" she breathed, for her wide, frightened eyes were staring straight into the terrible ones of Von Pfaffen.

"You she-devil," his voice was curiously low; "you thought to trick me, didn't you? You thought by giving me the wrong information you'd be rid of me! Do you know what you have done? You have killed hundreds, thousands of your countrymen. You have sent them to their death in vain!"

She was following his words, shaking, sinking almost to her knees, cringing before the blow she knew was coming.

The man's fury was blinding him. He took a step toward her. She must be tortured for what she had done to him.

"You let me take that information to my superiors," he cried hoarsely; "they acted upon it. You brought ruin to my cause, disgrace to me. My career is ended. Did you imagine you could deceive me and no harm come to you?"

In Marie's breast a faint suspicion of what had taken place was awakening. She scarcely dared voice it, even to herself.

"I gave you information," she panted, but Von Pfaffen burst in upon her words with a string of vile oaths.

"But wrong! Wrong!" he shouted. "Twenty miles wrong!"

She lifted her head, a breathless, wondering hope in her eyes.

"And the French have won?"

His face was black.

"Yes, damn them and you!" he swore. She still leaned against the wall, the blood throbbed in her fingers clutching the pistol behind her back, but through her heart surged a wave of joy, of thankfulness. Paulette had been in time!

"Everything has gone wrong," he snarled, "even that message I sent the other night never reached its destination."

"There was no message sent," she said in a clear, distinct voice.

He stopped in the step he was taking toward her. The look of sheer hatred that burned across his face would have set her cowering with terror at another time, but now, the knowledge that she had helped France, and aided her husband's cause, lifted her above the thought of fear.

"I took that tracing when your back was turned," she went on in the same clear voice. "I burned it!"

The man made a sound in his throat as though he were choking, his face turned purple, his brilliant eyes burned with the fury of a maniac.

"You who did that!" he gasped.

She looked at him defiantly.

"Yes, I did it!" she said, "and I knew the information I gave you yesterday was wrong. I sent you to a place twenty miles away from where I knew the attack was to be made. I sent the word after you that warned Sains, that brought victory to my husband's cause!" And then something of the look that had been in Madame's eyes when she had echoed the Marseillaise flashed into her own, and she finished in a ringing voice, "for my own cause!"

Von Pfaffen was quite close to her now. The veins in his neck were swollen and throbbing, the whites of his eyes shot with little lines of red. There were spatters of foam in the corners of his thin lips.

"So that's what you did!" he hissed. "You devil! I'll make you wish you had never been born! I'll make your husband, if he is still alive, despise you! I'll make his people turn you out of their house! I'll make your own people shoot you as a spy if ever you cross their border."

She was watching him like a cat watches a vicious, brutal dog that she knows is going to spring as soon as he has finished worrying her. Her teeth were tearing at her under lip, the fingers of her free hand picked at her gown. Why didn't he kill her and end it all, she wondered? His nearness sent a wave of sickening nausea surging over her. The blood was pounding in her ears. His words came to her through it all.

"I'll force you into the streets where you belong," he shouted in her face.

Her eyes narrowed.

"If my husband were here," she said slowly, "he would kill you for that!"

Von Pfaffen flung a vile oath at her.

"When your husband sees you again," he said, "if he ever does, it will be to find you dead, and glad of it!"

Marie laughed a clear, ringing laugh, cold and absolutely mirthless.

"Do you think I fear death?" she said. "If my husband comes back I am going to tell him everything, and when he knows the truth he will kill you like a rat."

The man stopped and looked at her a moment, insolently, arrogantly.

"Oh, no, he won't," he said, quite calmly; "I've planned differently."

"What do you mean?" she whispered.

"Do you think you are going to leave this room alive?"

"I'm not afraid of death!"

He looked at her venomously.

"You're not afraid," he sneered. "Do you know what I am going to do?" His eyes were so evil that she cringed back against the protecting wall. "After I have killed you, I am going to tell your story in my own way," his meaning was only too plain.

"You devil," she whispered. A wave of red surged up staining her white throat and pale face.

A horrible smile broadened his wicked mouth. He had touched her.

"There will be more than one man concerned in the story I shall tell."

"You know that's a lie!"

He laughed.

"How do I know? There may have been a dozen before I found you."

So that was what he would tell Gerome, that would be his revenge!

"You coward!" she panted; "you monster! I'm glad you failed! Thank God your cause has failed; I----"

Beside himself with rage, he sprang toward her, clutching his hands about her throat.

"You're glad, are you?" he hissed; "you're glad!"

She struggled in his grasp. Suddenly there was a flash, a sharp report, then breathless silence.

For a moment the man stared horribly into her eyes, his hands at her throat clutched spasmodically once, twice, almost shutting away her breath before they loosened. He coughed, a queer, sputtering cough, straightened his thin shoulders jerkily, and then grotesquely spun about and fell sprawling to the floor, where he lay quiet.

Marie looked down at the smoking pistol that hung in her limp hand. She stared at it fascinated as though seeing it for the first time.

He had fallen quite close to the threshold of the door and keeping her eyes carefully averted from his sprawled body she walked slowly over to the little desk.

Scarcely realizing what she was doing, she placed the pistol in the drawer and covered it up with papers; then she shut the drawer and securely locked it. Her mind was curiously numb, as she turned and looked down at the dead man.

For a moment she swayed irresolutely, then with a supreme effort went over to where he lay. Shuddering, her whole soul revolting at her task, she stooped and dragged the body across the threshold and out into the hall.

He was a horrible sight. The sneer of hate had frozen on his face. His eyes stared wide, and his coat hunched about his shoulders where she had clutched it in dragging him through the door.

With a stifled scream she ran back into the salon, closing and locking the door; then she turned, leaning against the barrier between herself and what had been her evil genius.

"Thank God," she cried, "I'm free!"