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“Ha, ha, ha!”

Lemaire laughed mirthlessly.

“D’you think he’d show himself to me?”

He emptied his glass. Bouvier suddenly looked terrible—looked like the man who had put three bullets into his sleeping guest.

“How did I know?” he said.

He leaned across the table towards Lemaire.

“How did I know?” he repeated in a low voice.

“What—when your wife——”

“Yes. They didn’t let me see anything. They were too sharp. No; it was one night I saw him, with his mouth at her ear, coming in behind her through the door like a shadow. There!”

He sat back with his hands on his knees. Lemaire stared at him again.

Again the wind rustled furtively through the diseased vine-leaves of the arbour.

“It was then that I got out my revolver and charged it,” continued Bouvier, in a less mysterious voice, as of one returned to practical life. “For I knew she’d been up to some villainy. Pass the bottle!”...

“Pass the bottle!... Why don’t you pass the bottle?”

“Pardon!”

Lemaire pushed the bottle over to his friend.

“What’s the matter with you to-night?”