Aunt has just gone out, uncle is shut up in his rooms." At this Dario seemed relieved, and he even smiled.

"I don't want anybody to know, it is so stupid," he murmured.
"But in God's name what has happened ?" she again asked him.
"Ah! I don't know, I don't know," was his response, as he lowered his eyelids with a weary air as if to escape the question.

But he must have realised that it was best for him to confess some portion of the truth at once, for he resumed: "A man was hidden in the shadow of the porch--he must have been waiting for me.

And so, when I came in, he dug his knife into my shoulder, there." Forthwith she again leant over him, quivering, and gazing into the depths of his eyes: "But who was the man, who was he ?" she asked.

Then, as he, in a yet more weary way, began to stammer that he didn't know, that the man had fled into the darkness before he could recognise him, she raised a terrible cry: "It was Prada! it was Prada, confess it, I know it already!" And, quite delirious, she went on: "I tell you that I know it! Ah! I would not be his, and he is determined that we shall never belong to one another.