Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/339

328 meaning to which her own heart answered as flame leaps to the touch of a torch.

"We will have one freedom—the freedom of death, if not of life!"

She knew all that the whisper meant; knew that he might be powerless to give her the liberty of existence, but that he would give her the liberty of the grave—and share it.

As the links of her fetters broke, a rush, an alarm, a tumult, were borne down the silence from the distant corridors; the monks had awakened, and found, either their stranger-guest absent or their bolted gates unloosed. Those doors once freshly closed, those sleepers once aroused from their countless cells, and every avenue of escape would be sealed, every chance of flight ended for ever.

Without a pause for breath, without a glance at the fallen form of the great churchman, without sense or memory of the aching sinews and the bruised nerves that throbbed in heavy pain across his own breast, where the strength of his foe had dealt him blows that had rained down like an iron hammer on an iron plate, he drew his pistol with one hand, while with the other he held her close against him.

"We will beat them yet!" he said, in his teeth,