“We will build another,” said M. le Comte, pressing her to him. “When this cloud that covers France has rolled away we will build another home, which you will love even more, for we shall be very happy there.”
“Not happier than we have been here,” she said, with a smile full at the same time of tears and joy. “We have been very happy here, my love. Whatever they do, they cannot take the past away from us. The future belongs to God, but the past is ours.”
I looked away from them with tear-dimmed eyes down at that mob of savages. She had spoken truly—after all, their power for evil was limited to that: they could destroy the future, but they could not touch the past. And I remembered that I also had a past which was very sweet—a past not long as men count time, spanning indeed but a few short hours—and yet to memory an eternity!
“What are those men about?” asked a voice at my elbow, and Mlle. de Chambray pointed down at a group which had drawn a little apart from the rest.
They stood near the foot of the tower and seemed to be staring up at us, though in the darkness I could not be certain. Suddenly one of them whirled about his head some object which burst into a ring of flame. Then he hurled it up toward us.
“The fools!” said M. le Comte, with a laugh, “what can they hope to accomplish?”
As though in answer to the words there came from beneath our feet a rending crash, a sharp report, and a stream of acrid smoke poured up the stairway from the room below.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE UNFOLDING OF THE DRAMA.
Instinctively I had caught my companion to me to shield her from the shock, and we stood an instant so with bated breath. Then a fierce chorus of exulting yells startled us back to action.
“A grenade!” cried M. le Comte, and started for the stair.