Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/82

70 rising of another storm. The sound grew in intensity, even while she listened; and yet for a moment she misunderstood him. “O God!” she cried, out of the agony of nerves overwrought, “will that bell never stop? Will it never stop? Will no one stop it?”

“’Tis not the bell!” he cried, seizing her hand as if to focus her attention. “It is the mob you hear. They are returning. We have but to stand a moment at this open window, we have but to show ourselves to them, and we need live no longer! Mademoiselle! Clotilde!—if you mean what you say, if you are in earnest, the way is open!”

“And we shall die—together!”

“Yes, together. But have you the courage?”

“The courage?” she cried, a brave smile lighting the whiteness of her face. “The courage were needed to live. The courage were needed to do that. I am ready, quite ready. It can be no sin! To live with that in front of me were the sin! Come!” For the moment she had forgotten her people, her promise, all! It seemed to her that death would absolve her from all. “Come!”

He moved with her under the impulse of her hand until they stood at the gaping window. The murmur, which he had heard indistinctly a moment before, had grown to a roar of voices. The mob, on its return eastward along the Rue St. Honoré, was nearing the house. He stood, his arm supporting her, and they waited, a little within the window. Suddenly he stooped, his face hardly less white than hers: their eyes met; he would have kissed her.

She did not withdraw from his arm, but she drew back her face, her eyes half shut.

“No!” she murmured. “No! While I live I am his. But we die together, Tignonville! We die together. It will not last long, will it? And afterwards—”

She did not finish the sentence, but her lips moved in prayer, and over her features came a far-away look; such a