Page:Anthony Hope - Rupert of Hentzau.djvu/331

Rh I'm ready for you." For Rudolf’s blade had touched his in warning.

The steel jangled. The girl's pale face was at the crevice of the hinge. She heard the blades cross again and again. Then one would run up the other with a sharp grating slither. At times she caught a glimpse of a figure in quick forward lunge or rapid wary withdrawal. Her brain was almost paralysed. Ignorant of the mind and heart of young Rupert, she could not conceive that he tried to kill the King. Yet the words she had caught sounded like the words of men quarrelling, and she could not persuade herself that the gentlemen fenced only for pastime. They were not speaking now; but she heard their hard breathing and the movement of their unresting feet on the bare boards of the floor. Then a cry rang out, clear and merry with the fierce hope of triumph:

"Nearly! nearly!"

She knew the voice for Rupert of Hentzau's, and it was the King who answered calmly:

"Nearly isn't quite."

Again she listened. They seemed to be pausing for a moment, for there was no sound, save of the hard breathing and deep-drawn pants of men who rest an instant in the midst of intense exertion. Then came again the clash and the slitherings;