"I was in another fire," she murmured, still staring at the baron. "I—I nearly lost my life there."
The witness had reached the end of her strength; she was twisting and untwisting her white fingers piteously, while the pupils of her eyes widened and contracted in terror. She staggered as if she would faint or fall, and the guard was starting toward her when, through the anguished silence, a clear, confident voice rang out:
"Alice!"
It was the prisoner who had spoken, it was the lover who had come to the rescue and whose loyal cry broke the spell of horror. Instantly the girl turned to Lloyd with a look of infinite love and gratitude, and before the outraged clerk of the court had finished his warning to the young American, Alice had conquered her distress and was ready once more for the ordeal.
"Tell us in your own words," said the judge kindly, "how it was that you nearly lost your life a second time in a fire."
In a low voice, but steadily, Alice began her story. She spoke briefly of her humble life with the Bonnetons, of her work at Notre-Dame, of the occasional visits of her supposed cousin, the wood carver; then she came to the recent tragic happenings, to her flight from Groener, to the kindness of M. Pougeot, to the trick of the ring that lured her from the commissary's home, and finally to the moment when, half dead with fright, she was thrust into that cruel chamber and left there with M. Coquenil—to perish.
As she described their desperate struggle for life in that living furnace and their final miraculous escape, the effect on the audience was indescribable. Women screamed and fainted, men broke down and wept, even the judges wiped pitying eyes as Alice told how Paul Coquenil built the last barricade with fire roaring all about him, and then how he dashed among leaping flames and, barehanded, all but naked, cleared a way to safety.
Through the tense silence that followed her recital came the judge's voice: "And you accuse a certain person of committing this crime?"
"I do," she answered firmly.
"You make this accusation deliberately, realizing the gravity of what you say?"