"Out of my way!" said young Zuan, in a great voice of agony, and he dashed the old man aside and sprang through the half-open doors of the castle.
He knew where the private audience-room was, and ran there at speed. No soldier stood on guard at the door—all had been engaged in that hand-to-hand street-fight through the city. He tore the door open and reeled into the room, then closed it behind him and stood with his back against it.
The room was oddly like that room in the doge's palace where he had sat with his uncle two days since in Venice. The same great, carved table stood near the centre. The same high-set windows let in bars of colored light, which slanted down through the dimness and lay across floor and furniture in billets and lozenges of gules and vert and azure.
A single red beam rested upon the bared shoulder of the woman who hung drooping from her bonds, in the count's great chair of state; but lower, from between the woman's breasts, a darker red had coursed a downward trickling stream, and, still lower, made a red pool in the woman's lap. Her head, bent, with chin on breast, was in shadow, but out of the shadow two eyes, still half-open, gleamed with the shallow, dull opacity of death.
SHE HUNG DROOPING IN THE GREAT CHAIR OF STATE
Young Zuan, shaking against his closed door, gave a dry sob.
"Child! Child!" he mourned, bitterly. Then, all at once, his eyes narrowed in an alert frown. There was something strange here.
He crossed the room with swift steps and dropped upon one knee before the chair of state, staring close through the half-darkness.