kind of middle place between the old life and the new, and also because
he must decide what was to be his plan of search. First the West--first
Winnipeg, but where after that? He had at last secured information of
where Zoe and Gerard Fynes had stayed while in Montreal; and now he
followed clues which would bring him in touch with folk who knew them.
He came to know one or two people who were with Zoe and Gerard in the
last days they spent in the metropolis, and he turned over and over in
his mind every word said about his girl, as a child turns a sweetmeat in
its mouth. This made him eager to be off; but on the very day he decided
to start at once for the West, something strange happened.

It was towards the late afternoon of a Saturday, when the streets were
full of people going to and from the shops in a marketing quarter, that
Madame Glozel came to him and said:

"M'sieu', I have an idea, and you will not think it strange, for you have
a kind heart. There is a woman--look you, it is a sad, sad story hers.
She is ill and dying in a room a little way down the street. But yes,
I am sure she is dying--of heart disease it is. She came here first when
the illness took her, but she could not afford to stay. She went to
those cheaper lodgings down the street. She used to be on the stage
over in the States, and then she came back here, and there was a man--
married to him or not I do not know, and I will not think. Well, the
man--the brute--he left her when she got ill--but yes, forsook her
absolutely! He was a land-agent or something like that, and all very
fine to your face, to promise and to pretend--just make-believe. When
her sickness got worse, off he went with 'Au revoir, my dear--I will be
back to supper.' Supper! If she'd waited for her supper till he came
back, she'd have waited as long as I've done for the fortune the gipsy
promised me forty years ago. Away he went, the rogue, without a thought