“Father—I hope I may still call you Father, as I have always done. When you receive this letter, I shall be dead and buried; thus perhaps will you be able to pardon me.
“I am not seeking to rouse your pity nor to mitigate my fault. I only wish to tell you, with all the sincerity of a woman who is going to kill herself in an hour’s time, the whole and complete truth.
“When in your generosity you married me, I became yours in return, and I loved you as much as a young girl can. I loved you as I loved my own father, almost as much; and one day when I was on your knee and you were embracing me, I called you ‘Father’ in spite of myself. That cry came instinctively and spontaneously from my heart. You were indeed a father to me, nothing but a father. You laughed and said to me: ‘Always call me that, my child, I like it.’
“We came to this town, and, forgive me, father, I fell in love. Oh! I struggled for a long time against it, for nearly two years, you must understand, nearly two years, and then I yielded, I became a guilty, a ruined woman.
“What of him? You will not guess who it was. I am quite easy in my mind on that point, since there were a dozen officers, always around me and with me, whom you used to call my twelve constellations.
“Father, do not try to find out who he is, and do not nurse any hatred of him. He has done what anyone else would have done in his place, and then, I am sure that he also loved me with all his heart.
“But listen! one day we had arranged to meet on the island of Bécasses, you know the little island, near the windmill. I was to land there while swimming, and he was to wait for me in the bushes, and then remain there until the evening, so that nobody should see him leave. I had just met him, when the branches parted, and we saw your orderly, Philip, who had taken us by surprise. I felt that were lost, and I uttered a loud cry; but he said to me, he, you understand: ‘Don’t worry, my dear, go for a swim, and leave me with this man.’
“I went away, so agitated that I nearly drowned myself, and I returned to your house, waiting for something terrible to happen.
“An hour later, in the drawing room corridor, I met Philip, who said to me in a low voice: ‘I am at Madam’s command, if she has a letter to give me.’ I knew then that he had sold himself, and that my friend had bought his silence.
“I gave him letters indeed, all my letters. He delivered them and brought me the replies.
“That lasted about two months. We trusted him, even as you yourself trusted him.
“Now, father, see what happened. One day, on the same island to which I had gone swimming, this time alone, I again met your orderly. He was expecting me and warned me that he was going to denounce us to you and give you some letters kept, stolen by him, if I did not yield to his desires.
“Oh! dear father, I was seized with fear, a vile, cowardly fear, above all a fear of you, so kind, yet deceived by me; fear for him also, for you would have killed him; fear for myself also, perhaps; how can I tell? I was bewildered and dismayed, so I thought that once more I would buy this wretch who also loved me. Oh, the shame of it!
“We are so weak, ourselves, that we lose our heads more easily than you. And then, when one has fallen, one sinks lower and lower. How could I tell what I was doing? I only knew that one of us three had to die, and I surrendered to that brute.
“You see, father, that I am not trying to make excuses for myself.
“Thereafter, what I should have foreseen happened; again and again, by threatening me, he took advantage of me when he liked. Like the other one, he has continually been my lover. Was it not abominable? And what a punishment, father!
“At last, I decided that I must kill myself. Living, I could never have confessed such a wrong to you. In death I could dare anything. No alternative was left to me, nothing could have washed away the stain of my wickedness. I felt that I could no longer love, or be loved, and even my handshake seemed to me to be tainted.
“In a little while I am going to take a bath, and I shall not come back.
“This letter for you will go to my lover’s house. He will receive it after my death, and in ignorance of its contents, will send it to you in accordance with my last wish. You yourself will read it on returning from the funeral.
“Goodbye, father, I have nothing more to tell you. Do what you will, and forgive me.”
The Colonel wiped the perspiration from his forehead. His self-command, the coolness displayed on the battlefield, suddenly came back to him.
He rang the bell, and a servant appeared.
“Send Philip to me,” he said, and half opened the drawer of his desk.
The man entered almost at once, a tall, red-whiskered soldier, sly in appearance, with cunning eyes.
The Colonel looked straight at him.
“You will tell me the name of my wife’s lover.”
“But, sir …”
The officer took his revolver from the drawer. “Now then, be quick! You know that I am not joking.”
“Very well, sir … it is Captain St. Albert.”
Scarcely had he uttered the name, when a spurt of flame seared his eyes, and he fell on his face, with
