The kind mouth of Mlle. Bjornsen set in determination; her intelligent eyes beamed behind their glasses.
The girl fluttered in front of them, still uttering the peculiar cry of her species, which to the good ladies was a desperate appeal for help, till she suddenly bolted beneath a low, dark archway.
The ladies hesitated. Then, “I must follow her, poor girl,” Mlle. Bjornsen remarked simply, for the courage of a thousand Scandinavian heroes beat in her blood.
“And where you adventure, my dear friend,” cried Mlle. Binesco, “I, a Roumanian woman and a friend of kings, will not be behind! We advance, then, in the name of humanity and of our unhappy sex!”
[32]
Humanity, compassion, womanly sympathy, and devotion to the cause of virtue—by these noble qualities these two poor ladies were lured to their fate. For it should be by now superfluous to say that, though they entered that archway, they did not emerge from it.