I had not meant to let her see that sight, but her unreasonable anger and distrust led me to it. I let her pass me and look through the grate. As she did so there was another burst of madness without, shouts and cries. She turned from the grille with a shudder and walked away, perhaps five or six yards, in absolute dejection. I said nothing, but at least it was good to be justified. However, I knew that worse might come, at any moment, and that it behoved me to be prepared. I could think of no expedient save to wait until nightfall. I had no way of measuring time, but had remarked the length of the shadows without, and thought the afternoon must be well advanced. When darkness came, we might escape; in daylight it was absolutely impossible. If, in the meantime, the cellar was searched, as it might be, was there a place to hide? I walked around it deliberately, and found no alcoves; there were the wine-butts, and that was all. Examining these, I found that a quarter of the number were empty, especially those in the farther corner, and had been empty long, for, feeling as far as I could reach, I found them dry and warped even in that unwholesome place. After this excursion, I returned to where the princess stood, and seeing an old bench near the door, dragged it forward.
“We must wait until nightfall, madame,” I said quietly, “and I commend even this bench for you to rest upon. You will need all your strength, and it is well to reserve it.”
At first she did not heed me, and then she thought better of it, and sat down on the bench, leaning her head on her hands and looking steadily away from me. I had carefully closed the grille, and the little light from the narrow and infrequent openings at the top of the wall served only to show her in outline. I found a small cask not far off, and sitting down, too, fell into a reverie. My first thoughts were of Maluta. His quick-witted stratagem had saved us, and I wondered if he had saved himself, and if he would find either the Prince Voronin or me again. That Voronin would escape seemed to me impossible; someone must, ere this, have found Kurakin, and Kurakin and Sophia would scarcely save the prince. From this my thoughts went back to their loadstar, she who sat before me in an attitude of deep dejection. I confess that the swift happenings of the day filled me with amazement, and as I looked at her, at her slim young figure and bowed head, I felt the keenest pity for her. I had married her; the thought that she was lawfully mine, even now, sent the blood tingling through my veins, but I had done it on the impulse of the moment, partly to save her from worse, but chiefly, I had to admit it to myself, because I loved her, and had loved her from the hour that I saw her in Maître le Bastien’s workshop; but what of her? I looked long and anxiously at that outlined figure and tried to divine her thoughts. What could they be? She was married to a stranger—I was little more, and, as she must think, an inferior. She was a fugitive, too, and she was separated from Galitsyn. Ah, Saint Denis, therein lay the devil’s pang! Did she love Galitsyn? She had as good as confessed his love for her, and did not the locket presuppose hers for him? And I—like a fool—had wedded her, against her will! I sat and tormented myself with these reflections, and similar ones, watching her all the while, and feeling the charm—a subtle, but a sure one—of her presence. She had feared Kurakin and hated him, she had preferred death—but did she prefer me? Nothing in her manner went to tell me so, I thought bitterly, and yet—rather than die—she had gone through the ceremony of marriage with me, and afterwards disdained to touch my hand! Was she thinking of Galitsyn now?
We sat thus, in silence, until the little light there was flickered out and we were left in darkness, and I watched the openings to see the night thicken without also, but—to our discouragement—the sounds in the court-yard increased, rather than decreased, and from an occasional flash, I knew that torches were burning there. All this while she had neither spoken nor moved, but now that I could not see her face at all she addressed me abruptly:
“Did you kill him?” she asked, in a strange voice.
Her question startled me, and then I realised that she was thinking of Kurakin, and my sudden appearance in the chapel, which must have seemed inexplicable to her.
“No,” I replied deliberately, minded to whet her curiosity and see what she would say; “I did not kill him, though I borrowed these petticoats of his—which do torment me.”
Silence and darkness, but I felt that she was not satisfied.
“You borrowed his clothes?” she said, in a tone of perplexity. “Was he then a party, too, to your appearance there?”
“An unwilling one, madame,” I replied, and laughed in spite of myself.