"For whom is that?" he asked.
"I do not know—but I will make them kill me."
"Why do you not shoot me, then?" he demanded, between despair and bitterness. "That would save you all. If I fell, they would turn and fly. They think I am Vishnu. Haven't you thought of that? I am in your power. Why don't you make yourself the benefactress of your country? Why don't you shoot her enemy?"
She made no answer, but her eyes met his steadily and calmly. He turned away, groaning. In vain he fought against it, in vain stung himself to action by the memory of all that she had done to him. His love remained triumphant. In that supreme moment his faith burst through the darkness, and again he believed in her, believed in her against reason, against the world, against the ineffaceable past, and against himself. And it was too late. He no longer stood alone. His word was given.
"Have pity on me!" he said, once more facing her. "Let me save you!"
"I should despise myself, and you would despise me—even more than you do now. I can not do less than share the fate of those whose lives my folly has jeopardized."
"At least go back to them—do not stay here. Beatrice, for God's sake!—I can not turn back. You have made me suffer enough—." He stood before her now as an incoherent pleader, and her heart burned with an exultation in which the thought of life and death played no part. She knew that he still loved her. It seemed for the moment all that mattered.
"I can not," she said.
"Beatrice, do not deceive yourself. Though my life is nothing to me—though I would give it a dozen times to save you—I can not do otherwise than go on. I may be weak, but I shall be stronger than my weakness. My word is given!"
He spoke with the tempestuous energy of despair. The minutes were passing with terrible swiftness, and any moment the sea behind him might burst its dam and sweep her and him to destruction. Already in the distance he heard the dull clamour of voices raised in angry remonstrance at the delay. Only those immediately about him were held in awed silence by the power of his personality. Again Beatrice shook her head. She stood in the doorway which opened out into the garden where the besieged had taken refuge. There was no other way. He advanced toward her. Instantly she raised her revolver and pointed it at the first man behind him.