“Listen!” he cried suddenly, rising on his elbow. “It is they! They have found me! Quick! to the roof!” He struggled to his feet, with that strength which imparts itself to dying men, super-human while it lasts. He threw one arm around her neck. “Help me!”
And thus they gained the hall, mounted the flight to the roof, he groaning and urging, she sobbing, hysterical, and frenzied. She climbed the ladder with him, threw back the trap, and helped him on the roof.
“Now leave me!” he said, kissing her hand.
She gave him her lips, and went down to her rooms, and waited and waited. This agony of suspense lasted a quarter of an hour, when again came the clatter of hoofs. Would this, too, prove a false alarm? She held her hand to her ear. If he were dying... They had stopped; they were mounting the stairs; O God, they were beating on the door!
“Open!” cried a voice without; “open in the king's name!”
She gasped, but words would not come. She clenched her hands until the nails sank into the flesh.
“Open, Madame, or down comes the door.”
The actress in her came to the rescue. The calm of despair took possession of her.
“In a moment, Messieurs,” she said. Her voice was without agitation. She opened the door and the cuirassiers pushed past her. “In heaven's name, Messieurs, what does this mean?”
“We want Johann Kopf,” was the answer, “and we have it from good authority that he is here. Do not interfere with us; you are in no wise connected with the affair.”