Page:Gilbert Parker--The Lane that had No Turning.djvu/103

Rh There was a knocking at the door, and a voice calling—a peremptory voice.

"There is only one way," he said. "They shall not take me. I will not be dragged to gaol for crowds to jeer at. I will not be sent to the scaffold, to your shame."

He ran to the door of the bath-room and flung it open. "If my life is to pay the price, then"

She came blindly towards him, stretching out her hands.

"Louis! Louis!" was all that she could say.

He caught her hands and kissed them, then stepped swiftly back into the little bathroom, and locked the door, as the door of the room she was in was burst open, and two constables and a half-dozen men crowded into the room.

She stood with her back to the bathroom door, panting, and white, and anguished, and her ears strained to the terrible thing inside the place behind her.

The men understood, and came towards her. "Stand back," she said. "You shall not have him. You shall not have him. Ah, don’t you hear? He is dying—O God, O God!" she cried, with tearless eyes and upturned face. "Ah, let it be soon! Ah, let him die soon!"

The men stood abashed before her agony. Behind the little door where she stood there was a muffled groaning. She trembled, but her arms were spread out before the door as though on a cross, and her lips kept murmuring: "Oh God, let him die! Let him die! Oh, spare him agony!"

Suddenly she stood still and listened-listened, with staring eyes that saw nothing. In the room men