It was, indeed, a dramatic moment when the gloom of Macias's cell was first broken by the glimmer of the hand-lamp, which revealed to the vast expectant audience the form of Elvira standing on the threshold, searching the darkness with her shaded eyes; and in the great love scene which followed the first sharp impression was steadily deepened word by word and gesture after gesture by the genius of the actress. Elvira finds Macias in a mood of calm and even joyful waiting for the morrow. His honour is satisfied; death and battle are before him, and the proud Castilian is almost at peace. The vision of Elvira's pale beauty and his quick intuition of the dangers she has run in forcing her way to him produce a sudden revulsion of feeling towards her, a flood of passionate reconciliation; he is at her feet once more; he feels that she is true, that she is his. She, in a frenzy of fear, cannot succeed for all her efforts in dimming his ecstasy of joy or in awakening him to the necessity of flight, and at last he even resents her terror for him, her entreaties that he will forget her and escape.

'Great heaven!' he says, turning from her in despair, 'it was not love, it was only pity that brought her here.' Then, broken down by the awful pressure of the situation, her love resists his no longer, but rather she sees in the full expression of her own heart the only chance of reconciling him to life, and of persuading him to take thought for his own safety.

'Elvira. See, Macias! these tears—each one is yours, is wept for you! Oh, if to soften that proud will of yours this hapless woman must needs open all her weak heart to you, if she must needs tell you that she lives only in your life and dies in your death, her lip will brace itself even to that pitiful confession! Ah me! these poor cheeks have been so blanched with weeping, they have no blushes left.'

To her this supreme avowal is the only means of making him believe her report of his danger, and turn towards flight; but in him it produces a joy which banishes all thought of personal risk, and makes separation from her worse than death. When she bids him fly, he replies by one word, 'Come!' and not till she has promised to guide him to the city gates and to follow him later on his journey will he move a step towards freedom. And then, when her dear hand is about to open to him the door of his prison, it is too late. Fernan and his assassins are at hand, the stairs are surrounded, and escape is cut off. Again, in these last moments, when the locked door still holds between them and the death awaiting them, her mood is one of agonised terror, not for herself, but for him; while he, exalted far above all fear, supports and calms her.

'Macias. Think no more of the world which has destroyed us! We owe it nothing—nothing! Come, the bonds which linked us to it are for ever broken! Death is at the door; we are already dead! Come, and make death beautiful: tell me you love, love, love me to the end!'

Then, putting her from him, he goes out to meet his enemies. There is a clamour outside, and he returns wounded to death, pursued by Fernan and his men. He falls, and Elvira defends him from her husband with a look and gesture so terrible that he and the murderers fall back before her as though she were some ghastly avenging spirit. Then, bending over him, she snatches the dagger from the grasp of the dying man, saying to him, with a voice into which Isabel Bretherton threw a wealth of pitiful tenderness, 'There is but one way left, beloved. Your wife that should have been, that is, saves herself and you—so!'

And in the dead silence that followed, her last murmur rose upon the air as the armed men, carrying torches, crowded round her. 'See, Macias, the torches—how they shine! Bring more—bring more—and light—our marriage festival!'

* * * * *

'Eustace! Eustace! there, now they have let her go! Poor child, poor child! how is she to stand this night after night? Eustace, do you hear? Let us go into her now—quick, before she is quite surrounded. I don't want to stay, but I must just see her, and so must Paul. Ah, Mr. Wallace is gone already, but he described to me how to find her. This way!'

And Madame de Châteauvieux, brushing the tears from her eyes with one hand, took Kendal's arm with the other, and hurried him along the narrow passages leading to the door on to the stage, M. de Châteauvieux following them, his keen French face glistening with a quiet but intense satisfaction.