It required an almost superhuman effort to regain complete possession of herself, to collect her thoughts, to chase away the last shreds of the dream. It would require a greater effort still to wrench herself away from this spot where she felt that henceforward her heart would remain buried. For the moment it meant gaining power over her limbs, which seemed disinclined to render her service, and over her head wherein tumultuous thoughts still refused to be marshalled in orderly array it meant, in fact, waiting for an opportunity to slip away as soon as she could. She knew in which direction lay the postern gate, and she knew her way back to La Frontenay. If she only could reach the château within the next half-hour, some means might yet be found to acquaint de Puisaye of what had occurred. She wondered vaguely how much de Maurel knew at this hour of what was in preparation over by Mortain, or what he could do if he knew everything.
The sight of the crowd still moving or standing, compact and busy, all round the storehouse maddened her. These men were impeding her way to the postern gate; they stood in the way of her getting to La Frontenay in time to send a runner over, even at this hour, to de Puisaye. It was nearly two hours since she left home—an eternity!—over half an hour since the first hooting of the sirens must have roused the countryside; and she still was so shaken, so numbed, so bruised, that she hadn't it in her to make a dash through the crowd, to push her way through all these men who would intercept her and would draw de Maurel's attention to her movements.
If he captured her and brought her back, if he refused to let her go, would she have the physical strength to resist? Oh, for a moment's darkness, an instant of silence, which would cover her flight!
Then at last the opportunity came. The groups around the storehouse gradually dispersed; the way lay clear as far as the angle of the building beyond which was darkness and solitude. Mathurin was engaging de Maurel's attention, and he—Ronnay—was standing half turned away from her. She gave one last look round her—one last look at the man whom she loved, and whom mayhap she would never in life see again, and in her heart she spoke a last, fond farewell. But as surely as a magnet draws to itself a piece of steel, so did this look of love from her compel and draw his gaze. Before she had time to move, he was down the steps and standing in front of her, so that he barred the way.
"Now I can carry you home, my beloved," he said.
He put out his arms ready to take hold of her. The wild excitement of the past half-hour had left no impress upon his iron physique save in a certain pallor of the cheeks and a stiffening of the firm jaw.
"I would have given my life's blood, drop by drop," he said simply, "to have spared you all that. You do believe me, Fernande, do you not?"
She could not reply. The instinct to fly, to run away, to close her ears to his voice, her eyes to his gaze, was so insistent, that she could have screamed with longing and a maddened feeling of impotence. By an impulsive gesture of self-protection she put up her hands.
"Yes, yes!" she said, trying to speak coldly, indifferently, even though her voice sounded hoarse and choked, and she could not control the nervous chattering of her teeth and the trembling of her limbs. "Yes, yes! of course I'll believe you, mon cousin!... You did what was right ... and I.... But now I entreat you to let me go home.... My aunt will be so anxious and...."
"And you are cold and overwrought," he said ruefully. "Curse those brutes," he added, with a sudden access of primitive savagery, "curse them for the evil their treachery has wrought!"