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There is no person in the French army by the name of
Vauvenarde.
I went straight to Lola Brandt with the hideous volume and the unwelcome
news. Together we searched the pages.
"He _must_ be here," she said, with feminine disregard of fact.
"Are you quite certain you have got the name right?" I asked.
"Why, it is my own name!"
"So it is," said I; "I was forgetting. But how do you know he was in the
army at all?"
He might have been an adventurer, a Captain of Kopenick of the day, who
had poured a gallant but mendacious tale into her ears.
"I hardly ever saw him out of uniform. He was quartered at Marseilles on
special duty. I knew some of his brother officers."
"Then," said I, "there are only two alternatives. Either he has left the
army or he is----"
"Dead?" she whispered.
"Let us hope," said I, "that he has left the army."
"You must find out, Mr. de Gex," she said in a low voice. "I took it for
granted that my husband was alive. It's horrible to think that he may be
dead. It alters everything, somehow.


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