In terror, she pushed the door open another inch--and held it rigidly, as, suddenly, her heart seemed to stop its beat. There came a gurgling moan--then--then an instant's deathlike silence--and then, with a wild cry, she flung the door wide open, and, as it crashed back against the wall, she stumbled out into the _atelier_.
She could see now, but it was as though it were not herself at all who looked around the room, for her brain seemed suddenly to be acting in an impersonal, numbed, apathetic way. She could see everything very clearly, but it was as though some one else, not she, were seeing it. She stretched out her arms before her like one who was blind to feel her way, and started across the _atelier_. She should have run, she should have run so fast, so fast, something within her told her she should run, but her limbs seemed scarcely able to support her weight--she could only stumble across the _atelier_ with her arms stretched out. That was not Jean who stood in the centre of the room holding a rapier in his hand, it was Paul Valmain. And the man who stood beside Paul Valmain was not Jean. And there were two other men, but neither of them was Jean. But they held a silent, grey-faced, unconscious form in their arms that they were lowering to the floor--and that was Jean. And they looked at her as she came, looked at her in so strange and startled a way; and Paul Valmain took a step toward her, and cried out, and drew suddenly back--and then--and then she was on her knees, and Jean's head was gathered into her arms, and he was so white, so terribly white, and he made no sound--and--and--
"Jean! Jean!"--she was crying his name passionately, piteously, crying it over and over again. "Jean! Jean!"
And he made no answer--only lay there white and still. And then some one took her arm and tried to draw her away--and some one spoke to her.
"Mademoiselle must permit me," the voice said gravely. "I am the doctor."
They took Jean from her, and the man who had said he was the doctor bent over Jean--and, still on her knees, she watched them. Why should they take him from her--now? It could do no one any harm now that she should have Jean, when Jean did not know, when perhaps--she lifted her head quickly, lifted it far back until the white throat and bosom lay bare; until the pure, glorious face, with its wonderful contour, its divinely beautiful lips, tense with outraged grief, looked full into another face that was thrust suddenly before her. It was Paul Valmain who had done this, and he dared to come and stand over her now, and hold in his hand the--why did she not scream out---the blade was red!