"There was too much between us," she said very low. "We could not be together here, but we could not be happy apart. I do not think God will take us away from one another. It is better like this, my dear!—it is better."
Her voice fell on a low, contented note, and he felt her lean more closely yet. An agony of rebellion rent his very soul. To love one woman only, to renounce her, to find her after long months of pain, to hear her say what he had hoped for only in his dreams, and then to know that he must watch her die. What vision of Paradise could blot this torture out? Powerless, powerless, powerless! In the height of his strength, and not able even to strike down the brute whose coarse hand touched her, and that other brute who would presently butcher her before his very eyes.
Then, whilst his straining senses reeled, he felt a jolt and the cart stopped. All about them surged an excited crowd.
There was a confused noise, women screamed. One high, clear voice called out, "Murderers! Assassins!" and the crowd took up the cry with angry insistence.
"See the old man! and the girl! ma foi, she has an angel's face. Is the guillotine to eat up every one?"
The muttering rose to a growl, and the growl to a roar. To and fro surged the growing crowd, the horses began to back, the car tilted. Dangeau looked round him, his heart beating to suffocation, but Aline appeared neither to know nor care what passed. For her the world was empty save for they two, and for them the gate of Heaven stood wide. She heard the song of the morning stars; she caught a glimpse of the glory unutterable, unthinkable.
As the shouting grew, the driver of their cart cast anxious glances over his shoulder. All at once he stood up, waving his red cap, calling, gesticulating.
A cry went up, "The gendarmerie, Henriot! Henriot and the gendarmes!" and the press was driven apart by the charge of armed horsemen. At their head rode Henriot, just freed from prison, flushed with strong drink, savage with his own impending doom.
The crowd scattered, but a man sprang for an instant to the wheels of the cart, and whispered one swift sentence in Dangeau's ear:
"Robespierre falls; nothing can save him."