The sound she uttered was low, but it reached the men's ears, and the two
whose backs were towards her turned as if they had been pricked. He who
held the lanthorn raised it, and the five glared at her and she at them.
Then a second cry, louder and more full of surprise, burst from her lips.
The nearest man, he who held the lanthorn high that he might view her,
was Tignonville, was her lover!
"Mon Dieu!" she whispered. "What is it? What is it?"
Then, not till then, did he know her. Until then the light of the
lanthorn had revealed only a cloaked and cowled figure, a gloomy phantom
which shook the heart of more than one with superstitious terror. But
they knew her now--two of them; and slowly, as in a dream, Tignonville
came forward.
The mind has its moments of crisis, in which it acts upon instinct rather
than upon reason. The girl never knew why she acted as she did; why she
asked no questions, why she uttered no exclamations, no remonstrances;
why, with a finger on her lips and her eyes on his, she put the packet
into his hands.
He took it from her, too, as mechanically as she gave it--with the hand
which held his bare blade. That done, silent as she, with his eyes set
hard, he would have gone by her. The sight of her there, guarding the
door of him who had stolen her from him, exasperated his worst passions.
But she moved to hinder him, and barred the way. With her hand raised
she pointed to the trapdoor.
"Go!" she whispered, her tone stern and low, "you have what you want!
Go!"
"No!" And he tried to pass her.
"Go!" she repeated in the same tone. "You have what you need." And
still she held her hand extended; still without faltering she faced the
five men, while the thunder, growing more distant, rolled sullenly
eastward, and the midnight rain, pouring from every spout and dripping
eave about the house, wrapped the passage in its sibilant hush. Gradually
her eyes dominated his, gradually her nobler nature and nobler aim
subdued his weaker parts. For she understood now; and he saw that she
did, and had he been alone he would have slunk away, and said no word in
his defence.
But one of the men, savage and out of patience, thrust himself between
them.
"Where is he?" he muttered. "What is the use of this? Where is he?" And
his bloodshot eyes--it was Tuez-les-Moines--questioned the doors, while
his hand, trembling and shaking on the haft of his knife, bespoke his
eagerness. "Where is he? Where is he, woman? Quick, or--"
"I shall not tell you," she answered.
"You lie," he cried, grinning like a dog. "You will tell us! Or we will
kill you too! Where is he? Where is he?"