Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/84

72 even now too late to escape? Too late to avoid the consequences of the girl’s silly persistence? Too late to? Her eyes were closed, she hung half lifeless on his arm. She would not know, she need not know until afterwards. And afterwards she would thank him! Afterwards—meantime the window was open, the street was empty, and still the crowd hung back and did not come.

He remembered that two doors away was a narrow passage, which leaving the Rue St. Honoré turned at right angles under a beetling archway, to emerge in the Rue du Roule. If he could gain that passage unseen by the mob! He would gain it. With a swift movement, his mind made up, he took a step forward. He tightened his grasp of the girl’s waist, and, seizing with his left hand the end of the bar which the assailants had torn from its setting in the window jamb, he turned to lower himself. One long step would land him in the street.

At that moment she awoke from the stupor of exaltation. She opened her eyes with a startled movement; and her eyes met his.

He was in the act of stepping backwards and downwards, dragging her after him. But it was not this betrayed him. It was his face, which in an instant told her all, and that he sought not death, but life! She struggled upright and strove to free herself. But he had the purchase of the bar, and by this time he was furious as well as determined. Whether she would or no, he would save her, he would drag her out. Then, as consciousness fully returned, she, too, took fire.

“No!” she cried, “I will not!” and she struggled more violently.

“You shall!” he retorted between his teeth. “You shall not perish here.”

But she had her hands free, and as he spoke she thrust him from her passionately, desperately, with all her