In the hour of his triumph the sword had fallen. France would be saved—there would be no bombardment of Paris if the enemy were to die to-night. This she told herself, standing in the sharp draught from the open windows, and knew a thrill of intolerable triumph, thinking:
"Our Lord has delivered him into hands as weak as mine!"
Ting!...
Her heart leaped and stood still. She looked breathlessly from the window. Along the middle of the snowy Rue de Provence, where pedestrians must walk to avoid the dangers of the frozen sideways, a lantern moved, carried by a squat, muffled shape. A taller figure followed, moving steadily.
Ting-ting-ting!...
A shock and thrill of mingled awe and terror passed through her. To some dying Catholic, saint or sinner, in the dawn of this day of the Christ-birth, the Body of the Virgin-born was being conveyed.... Was it not to aid a soul in dire temptation—two souls, it might be—that He had bidden His minister pass this way?
She bent the knee and made the Sign of the Cross, trembling, then rose and sped back to the suffocating man. With a strength that she could not have believed herself possessed of, she raised his discolored head upon her lap.... His great jaws were wide open. She thrust the tiny hand within them. Shuddering, sickening, she probed with her slender fingers, thrusting them down into the contracting, gulping throat.
Something bright projected beneath the swollen uvula, wedged firmly into the membrane, blocking the orifice of the trachea. She nipped the projecting end in the little fingers and pulled. It yielded. He gave a gulp of relief. As the big teeth snapped together, she plucked the little hand from peril, bringing with it the broken silver pin.