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“But his wife died. He identified her in the Morgue.”

“I do not know why I speak to you so, but I feel that the time has come to tell all to you. That was not his wife in the Morgue. It was his wife’s sister, my sister whom my brother drowned for her money–he made her life such a misery! And he did not try to save her when he knew she meant to drown herself. She was not bad; she was a thousand times better than I am, a million times better than he was. He was a devil. But he is dead now too…. She was taken to the Morgue. She looked like me altogether; she wore a ring of mine, and she had a mark on her shoulder the same as one on mine; her initials were the same. Luke had never seen her. He believed that I lay dead there, and he buried her for me. I thought at the time that it would be best I should be dead to him and to the world. And so I did not speak. It was all the same to my brother. He got what was left of my fortune, and I got what was left of hers. For I was dead, you see–dead, dead, dead!”

She paused again. Neither spoke for a moment. Shorland was thinking what all this meant to Clare Hazard and Luke Freeman.

“Where is he? What is he doing?” she said at length. “Tell me. I was–I am–his wife.”

“Yes, you were–you are–his wife. But better if you had been that woman in the Morgue,” he said without pity. What were this creature’s feelings to him? There was his friend and the true-souled Clare.

“I know, I know,” she replied. “Go on!”

“He is well. The man that was born when his wife lay before him in the Morgue has found another woman, a good woman who loves him and–“

“And is married to her?” interrupted Gabrielle, her face taking on again a shining whiteness. But, as though suddenly remembering something, she laughed that strange laugh which might have come from a soul irretrievably lost. “And is married to her?”

Blake Shorland thought of the lust of cruelty, of the wounds, and the acids of torture. “Not yet,” he said; “but the marriage is set for the twenty-six of this month.”

“How I could spoil all that!”

“Yes, you could spoil all that. But you have spoiled enough already. Don’t you think that if Luke Freeman does marry, you had better be dead as you have been this last five years? To have spoiled one life ought to be enough to satisfy even a woman like you.”

Her eyes looked through Blake Shorland’s eyes and beyond them to something else; and then they closed. When they opened again, she said: “It is strange that I never thought of his marrying again. And now I want to kill her–just for the moment. That is the selfish devil in me. Well, what is to be done, monsieur? There is the Morgue left. But then there is no Morgue here. Ah, well, we can make one, perhaps–we can make a Morgue, monsieur.”

“Can’t you see that he ought to be left the rest of his life in peace?”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“Well, then!”

“Well–and then, monsieur? Ah, you did not wish him to marry me. He told me so. ‘A fickle foreigner,’ you said. And you were right, but it was not pleasant to me. I hated you then, though I had never spoken to you nor seen you; not because I wanted him, but because you interfered. He said once to me that you had told the truth in that. But–and then, monsieur?”

“Then continue to efface yourself. Continue to be the woman in the Morgue.”

“But others know.”

“Yes, Henri Durien knows and M. Barre suspects.”

“So, you see.”

“But Henri Durien is a prisoner for life; he cannot hear of the marriage unless you tell him. M. Barre is a gentleman: he is my friend; his memory will be dead like you.”