"There were others, of course. There was a grubby ropedancer of low beginnings, named Jacob Hall, who sometimes directed the Punch-and-Judy shows at St. Bartholomew's fair. Late in her career, there was an old white-haired rake called Beau Fielding, who wished to marry her, and did marry her. Beau Fielding, by the way, had a grown daughter. It has occurred to me to wonder that if the course of capricious time were turned and altered..:"
Dimly ahead Bennett could see the silhouettes of Louise and Willard. From her strained tensity he could guess that Louise was staring ahead as though she tried to make out something in the gloom. She shook as though she were cold, and Willard gently touched her arm. Bennett could have sworn that a board creaked in the staircase before either Maurice or H. M. set foot on it. He looked round. He and Katharine had lagged far behind the others. He could see her eyes distinctly in the gloom as she looked up.
"This," she said, "is where.."
"Yes. And I'm Rainger."
His hands touched her shoulders and tightened. It was an insane business, but the crazy fates were decreeing it as inevitably as they drew that group to King Charles's Room. It may have lasted a second or two minutes, a hot blankness while he felt her body trembling; then he felt her lips move round and heard above the enormous pounding of his heart some whisper like, "-join Willard, you with Louise." She tore away before he could blurt out, "When you get to that room, don't look downstairs"; and he thought he must have said them aloud. But he could be sure of nothing in the shaken darkness of that moment, except that his wits were bewildered and that he had forgotten for a moment where the real Rainger was.
Love and death, love and death, and Katharine's lips. The candle-flame moved on ahead up the stairs, touching tall gilt framed portraits; and another picture of the damned woman leaped out of gloom. Barbara Vi!liers or Marcia Tait, the portrait was smiling… He glanced down, and was surprised to find that it was Louise who walked beside him now. She did not look at him; her hands were gripped together, a knuckle-joint cracked and Maurice's voice flowed on thinly ahead:
"— along this gallery. You will notice the chairs as being of royal property; the king's arms, a crown supported by two lions rampant and enwoven with the letters C.R., have been worked into the top of the chair-back. "
Bennett stammered something to Louise without knowing what it was, but he was startled to see the fierce fixity of her look ahead. The light approached the door of the King's Room.
"And here-" said Maurice. He stopped. `This door," he snapped, "this door is locked!"
"Uh, yes. Yes, so it is," said H. M. "Well, never mind. I got the key. Wait till I open it, now."