“You'll go to your death,” she reminded him.
He sneered. “What signifies a day or so? Give me the key.”
“I love you, Anthony!” she cried, livid to the lips.
“Lies!” he answered her contemptuously. “The key!”
“No,” she answered, and her firmness matched his own. “I will not have you slain.”
“'Tis not my purpose—not just yet. But I must save the others. God forgive me if I offer violence to a woman,” he added, “and lay rude hands upon her. Do not compel me to it.” He advanced upon her, but she, lithe and quick, evaded him, and sprang for the middle of the room. He wheeled about, his self-control all slipping from him now. Suddenly she darted to the window, and with the hand that clenched the key she smote a pane with all her might. There was a smash of shivering glass, followed an instant later by a faint tinkle on the stones below, and the hand that she still held out covered itself all with blood.
“O God!” he cried, the key and all else forgotten. “You are hurt.”
“But you are saved,” she cried, overwrought, and staggered, laughing and sobbing, to a chair, sinking her bleeding hand to her lap, and smearing recklessly her spotless, shimmering gown.
He caught up a chair by its legs, and at a single blow smashed down the door—a frail barrier after all. “Nick!” he roared. “Nick!” He tossed the chair from him and vanished into the adjoining room to reappear a moment later carrying basin and ewer, and a shirt of Trenchard's—the first piece of linen he could find.
She was half fainting, and she let him have his swift, masterful way. He bathed her hand, and was relieved to find that the injury was none so great as the flow of blood had made him fear. He tore Trenchard's fine cambric shirt to shreds—a matter on which Trenchard afterwards commented in quotations from at least three famous Elizabethan dramatists. He bound up her hand, just as Nick made his appearance at the splintered door, his mouth open, his pipe, gone out, between his fingers. He was followed by a startled serving-wench, the only other person in the house, for every one was out of doors that night.