"How sure you are of your power," says Dulce, angrily. "Yet I will not be disheartened. I will save him if I can."
"You are quite determined?"
"Quite."
"You will go now to meet him, now when your anger is hot, and say to him what will surely grieve or wound him?"
"Let us talk sense," says Dulce, impatiently. "I shall simply warn him to have nothing more to do with a woman who looks upon him with scorn and contempt."
As she speaks she enters the closet that is nothing more than a big wardrobe, and, as she does so, Portia, quick as thought follows her, and, closing the door behind her, turns the key in the lock.
"You shall stay there until you promise me to tell nothing of this hour's conversation to Fabian," she says, with determination.
"Then I shall probably stay here forever," replies Dulce from within, with equal determination.
Portia going over to the fire seats herself by it. Dulce going to the latticed window inside seats herself by it. An hour goes by. The little clock up over the mantelpiece chimes five. A gun is fired off in the growing dark outside. There is a sound as of many voices in the hall far down below. A laugh that belongs to Dicky Browne floats upwards, and makes itself heard in the curious stillness of the room above where the jailer sits guarding her prisoner.
Then Portia, rising, goes to the door of the condemned cell, and speaks as follows: