He was in the last extremity of fright, with a face the colour of clay and his limbs quaking as one who has an ague.
“We must go back,” Hera said, and drew at his coat sleeve, for he seemed to have lost power to move from where he stood. Her thought flew to the library as a harbour of safety.
“Come,” she said to him; “they may not think to look there.”
Across the field of tessellated marble they retraced their steps, he following her, clinging close to her, as a child might have clung to its guardian. A sudden horror had mastered him, a sense of retribution at hand. The monster of poverty, which he had belittled as a bogey of the demagogue, was speaking to him with no uncertain voice. He could hear the workers, whom he had never thought of before as an army of might, coming in their corporate strength to be his executioner.
Tarsis entered the library first, and would have taken no precaution other than to close the door and lock it; but Hera bethought herself to draw to the silken hanging that hid the entrance from view on the other side. Then she closed the door and turned the key. Silently, powerlessly, they awaited the hazard of events.
CHAPTER XXII
TARSIS ARRAIGNED
Half a minute more and they knew the mob had entered the Atlantean chamber. First they heard the howl of triumph and the trampling, rough-shod feet on the marble pavement; then the thud and crash of objects falling and the shattering of glass. They were able to guess that Demos was venting his fury on the Barbiondi portraits, the mirrors, and the carved Atlantes. But these incidents in the attempted remaking of Italy were of little moment to the man and woman in hiding. The only sound they dreaded was that which the tearing away of the drapery before their retreat would make and the trying of the handle of the door. Tarsis had dropped into a chair near the window, the curtain of which he clutched with one hand, and listened, as if with every nerve, for the fateful signal. Hera was on her feet, calm in the consciousness of duty performed, resolved to die bravely, if die she must. Presently the summons came. The drapery was jerked down and a violent hand rattled the door knob.
“We’ve found the fox’s hole!”
“Here’s Tarsis!”
“Axes, comrades! Down with the door!”