he began to her. She touched me gently on the arm.
"Come, Arthur," she said, and then to him, "You have heard the news?"
He looked at her rather muzzily.
"Baron Halderschrodt has committed suicide," she said. "Come, Arthur."
We passed on slowly, but de Mersch followed.
"You—you aren't in earnest?" he said, catching at her arm so that we swung round and faced him. There was a sort of mad entreaty in his eyes, as if he hoped that by unsaying she could remedy an irremediable disaster, and there was nothing left of him but those panic-stricken, beseeching eyes.
"Monsieur de Sabran told me," she answered; "he had just come from making the constatation. Besides, you can hear . . ."
Half-sentences came to our ears from groups that passed us. A very old man with a nose that almost touched his thick lips, was saying to another of the same type:
"Shot himself . . . through the left temple . . . Mon Dieu!"
[226]
