She did her best to save him. No plea could have carried deeper in that moment. That it smothered, for the time, the flame of their temper, cooled their wrath against him, was evinced in the softening of their faces, the fading somewhat of the frenzy in their eyes. And what might have been the ending of the chapter is lost in its actual outcome. Even as Hera spoke, the murmur of the street changed to a multitude’s panic-stricken cries. Those nearest the window were first to catch the note of alarm. It caused them to start and stand motionless, ears alert. The word “soldiers” passed from lip to lip. Volleys of musketry, ominously large, sounding in quick succession, and crackling ever nearer, proclaimed the approach of troops in overwhelming force.
An impulse to save their own lives ruled them now. Red Errico began the cry of “Away, away!” and the others took it up. With not so much as a parting glance of contempt at Tarsis, the leader shouldered the women aside and pushed toward the door, with the others moving in that direction. As they passed the man on the table they forgot to jeer him. The resounding salvos of artillery, the answering shrieks of the mob, coming to them ever plainer from the Corso, were matters of greater import than the baiting of a poor capitalist.
It was not so, however, with one woman in that tattered collection—La Ferita. Her deed was performed with the ease of instinctive prompting, conviction, decision. She alone was aware of her purpose. No one saw the blade steal from the folds of her gown; they saw it only at the instant that it flashed the light of the torches and descended, true, firm, cold, resting a second, as if with lingering joy, between the shoulders of Tarsis.
“Let him die; he killed my child,” she said, and joined the throng moving toward the door.
The effect of the thrust on the man who received it was, oddly enough, to make him sit erect for the moment, and it brought back to his countenance some of the alertness that abject, crushing terror had bereft it of; it was the animation of strong surprise, puzzled amazement. Hera, whenever she lived the scene again in memory, saw that look of bewildered astonishment on his face at the moment the blow was delivered. La Ferita’s comrades seemed little impressed by what she had done. They were fighting each other for a chance to get out of the room—to flee from the soldiers.
CHAPTER XXIII
FETTERS STRUCK OFF
When they all had gone Hera groped on the wall for the electric key, found it, and redeemed the darkness with a flood of light. There was Tarsis, ashen to the lips, prostrate on the table, one arm hanging limp over the side. She threw open all the casements, and the smoke poured out. Her next impulse was to go for aid, but she turned first to her husband, lifted him to a sitting position, and by a supreme effort bore his sheer weight to a lounge. Then, obeying a motion of his hand, she bowed her head and heard him whisper:
“I—am—dying.”
His lips continued to move, but so feeble was his voice that only fragments of what he said were audible. Seeing her strive to hear, he exerted himself pitifully to speak louder, and she made out the words:
“You will be glad when I am gone.”