Without further hesitation, he stated:

"My object is simple enough. It is the release of my friends Gilbert and Vaucheray."

"Is that true? Is that true?" she exclaimed, quivering all over and questioning him with an anxious glance.

"If you knew me... "

"I do know you... I know who you are. For months, I have taken part in your life, without your suspecting it... and yet, for certain reasons, I still doubt... "

He said, in a more decisive tone:

"You do not know me. If you knew me, you would know that there can be no peace for me before my two companions have escaped the awful fate that awaits them."

She rushed at him, took him by the shoulders and positively distraught, said:

"What? What did you say? The awful fate?... Then you believe... you believe ... "

"I really believe," said Lupin, who felt how greatly this threat upset her, "I really believe that, if I am not in time, Gilbert and Vaucheray are done for."

"Be quiet!... Be quiet!" she cried, clutching him fiercely. "Be quiet!... You mustn't say that... There is no reason... It's just you who suppose ... "

"It's not only I, it's Gilbert as well... "

"What? Gilbert? How do you know?"

"From himself?"

"From him?"

"Yes, from Gilbert, who has no hope left but in me; from Gilbert, who knows that only one man in the world can save him and who, a few days ago, sent me a despairing appeal from prison. Here is his letter."

She snatched the paper greedily and read in stammering accents:

"Help, governor!... I am frightened!... I am frightened!... "

She dropped the letter. Her hands fluttered in space. It was as though her staring eyes beheld the sinister vision which had already so often terrified Lupin. She gave a scream of horror, tried to rise and fainted.

The child was sleeping peacefully on the bed. The mother did not move from the sofa on which Lupin had laid her; but her easier breathing and the blood which was now returning to her face announced her impending recovery from her swoon.

He observed that she wore a wedding-ring. Seeing a locket hanging from her bodice, he stooped and, turning it, found a miniature photograph representing a man of about forty and a lad - a stripling rather - in a schoolboy's uniform. He studied the fresh, young face set in curly hair:

"It's as I thought," he said. "Ah, poor woman!"

The hand which he took between his grew warmer by degrees. The eyes opened, then closed again. She murmured:

"Jacques... "

"Do not distress yourself... it's all right he's asleep."

She recovered consciousness entirely. But, as she did not speak, Lupin put questions to her, to make her feel a gradual need of unbosoming herself. And he said, pointing to the locket:

"The schoolboy is Gilbert, isn't he?"

"Yes," she said.

"And Gilbert is your son?"

She gave a shiver and whispered:

"Yes, Gilbert is my son, my eldest son."

So she was the mother of Gilbert, of Gilbert the prisoner at the Sante, relentlessly pursued by the authorities and now awaiting his trial for murder!