Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/288

Rh "To the soldiers of Francis."

She laughed aloud as she spoke; she knew that the cowardice of his nature would no more let him pass out where she went than if gates of adamant opposed him. He was startled and bewildered; he felt tenfold fear of her as she stood there in the shadows before him, with that despair on her face and that laugh on her lips; he had thought her dead or dying; a superstitious hesitation held him afraid and irresolute.

"Wait—wait," he said, stretching his hands out to hold her. "What is it you dream of? What mad thing would you do?" "Save the life you and I have sent out to destruction."

Before he could arrest her she had passed him, and was far out beyond the watch-fire, and lost in the gloom of the entrance-passage; her hand was on the boy Berto's shoulder, and thrust him down the tortuous passage, swiftly and silently up to the open air. When once more the darkness lay behind her, and on her face was the breath of the morning, she bent to him.

"Which way?"

He pointed to the northward, looking with wistful anxiety in her face.