Then, lifting the cross from the rosary at her girdle, she slipped out of her chair and knelt down beside her desk, her young head bent low over the crucifix which she held between the palms of her joined hands.
Halkett, head also lowered, stood motionless.
After a few moments she rose lightly from her knees.
"It is a vow, now," she said. "I have bound myself to silence concerning the source of my information—" her untroubled eyes rested again on his—"because I believe in you, Monsieur."
He started to speak, but seemed to find no word to utter. A bright color mounted to his brow; he turned abruptly from the desk and stepped toward the open door.
And the instant he appeared there, framed by the doorway, a shot rang out, knocking a cloud of stucco and plaster from the wall beside him.
CHAPTER IX
He shrank back flat against the wall, edged along it, and slipped swiftly inside the house. A thick veil of lime dust hung across the open doorway, gilded by the sunlight. Crumbs of plaster and mortar still fell to the schoolroom floor.
Through the heated silence of early afternoon he could hear the distant cries of the children from their playground; there was no other sound; nothing stirred; nobody came.
If Warner had noticed the shot at all, no doubt he supposed it to be the premature report of some piece. To the gaunt, furtive Vosges poacher no close season exists. If it did exist, he would cease to.