"As I've told you I had come without plans, with no line of action decided upon. Now the futility, the blind rashness of what I had done was borne in upon me. His stoney calm, his measured voice, showed me I was pitted against an antagonist whose strength was to mine as a lion's to a mouse. The thought maddened me, I was ready to say anything to break him, to conquer and crush him and in my desperation—guided by some flash of intuition—I said the right thing:
"'Oh, don't waste time denying it. It's too late for that now. It's not I alone who knows—they know in New York—everything. How you did it, how you stole away, and where you are now. The net is around you—they've got you. There's no use any more in lies and tricks, for you can't escape them.'
"He had listened without a movement or a sign of agitation. But when I finished he straightened his shoulders and throwing up his head sent a glance of piercing question over the curtained windows. His whole being suggested something arrested and fiercely alert, not fear, but a wild concentration of energy, as if all his forces were aroused to meet a desperate call.
"Then suddenly he made a step forward, leaned across the table and spoke. I can't tell you all he said. It was so horrible and his face—it was like a demon's in its death throes! But it was about his love for me—that he'd done it all for me—that he could give me more than any woman ever had before—lay the world at my feet. And to come with him—now—we could get away—we had time yet. Oh!" she closed her eyes and shuddered at the memory—"I can't go on. He knew it was hopeless, he must have known then what the men outside meant. It was the last defiance—the last mad hope.
"And then I conquered him, not as I'd meant to do, not with any intention. All the horror and loathing I felt came out in what I said. Terrible words—how I hated him—all that had been locked up in me since I'd known the truth. His face grew so dreadful that I shrank back in this corner, and finally to hide it, hid my own in my hands.
"People do such strange things in life, not at all like what they do in books and plays. When I stopped speaking he said nothing, and dropping my hands I looked at him, not knowing what I'd see. He was standing very quiet, gazing straight in front of him, like a man thinking—deeply thinking, lost in thought.
"We were that way for a moment, so still you could hear the clock ticking, then, without a word or look at me, he turned and went out of the room.
"I was so paralyzed by the scene that for a space I stood where he'd left me, squeezed into the angle behind the mantelpiece, stunned and senseless. Then the sound of his feet on the stairs called me back to life. He was going, he was running away. I did not know myself then who the men outside were and thought he could easily make his escape.
"I ran out into the hall, calling to the French woman. She came, out of a door somewhere in the back part of the house, and I have a queer impression of her face by the light of a bracket lamp, almost ludicrous in its expression of fright. As I ran up the stairs I screamed to her to come, to follow me, and heard her steps racing along the passage and her panting exclamations of terror. At the stair head my ear caught the snap of a closing door and the click of a key turned in a lock. It came from the darkened end of the hall and as I ran down I cried to the woman, 'Get someone. Call. Get help.' Then and there she threw up a window and thrusting out her head screamed into the darkness, 'Au secours! Au secours!'
"A man's voice, close under the window, answered her and she flew past me to another staircase beyond in the darkness down which I could hear her clattering rush. Then there were the sound of steps, and the breaking of wood, sharp tearing noises mixed with the shouts of men. It all came together, for as I stood outside that locked door, listening to the woman's cries and the smashing of the wood below, sharp as a flash came the report of a pistol from the closed room.