There were no depths of ignominy beyond her now. She cried out shrilly and incoherently, then stumbling through the snow, caught Doomsdorf’s arm. “No, no,” she cried, fawning with lips and hands. “Don’t go in there—they’re going to try to kill you. I didn’t have anything to do with it—I swear I didn’t—and don’t make me suffer when I’ve saved you——”
He shook her roughly, until the torrent of her words had ceased, and she was silenced beneath his lurid gaze.
“You say—they’ve got a trap laid for me?” he demanded.
Her hands clasped before him. “Yes, but I say I’m not guilty——”
He pushed her contemptuously from him, and she fell in the snow. Then, with a half-animal snarl that revealed all too plainly his murderous rage, he drew his pistol from his holster and started on.
XXIX
Watching through the crack in the door Ned saw the girl’s act; and her treason was immediately evident to him. Whatever darkness engrossed him at the sight of the ignoble girl, begging for her little life even at the cost of her lover’s, showed not at all in his white, set face. Whatever unspeakable despair came upon him at this ruin of his ideals, this destruction of all his hopes, it was evidenced neither in his actions nor in the clear, cool quality of his thought.
No other crisis had ever found him better disciplined. His mind seemed to circumscribe the whole, dread situation in an instant. He turned, met Bess’s straightforward gaze, saw her half-smile of complete understanding. As she leaped toward him, he snatched up their two hooded outer coats, and his arm half encircling her, he guided her through the door.
Whether or not she realized what had occurred he did not know, but there was no time to tell her now. Nor were explanations necessary; trusting him to the last she would follow where he led. “We’ll have to run for it,” he whispered simply. “Fast as you can.”
Ned had taken in the situation, made his decision, seized the parkas, and guided Bess through the door all in one breath: the drama of Lenore’s tragic dishonor was still in progress in the glare of the Northern Lights. Doomsdorf, standing back to them, did not see the two slip out the door, snatch up their snowshoes and fly. Otherwise his pistol would have been quick to halt them. Almost at once they were concealed, except for their strange flickering shadows in the snow, behind the first fringe of stunted spruce.