"Hush, Hugo!" she said. "Hush, lad, and listen. There are stairs up aloft—I saw them in a dream. I saw the angels and the redeemed ascending and descending as I prayed, even when you came in to call me back. I shall ask God to let me wait at the stair-head a little while for you—till it should be time for you to come, my dear, my dear. You would not be very long, and I could wait. I would listen for your feet upon the stair, dear love. And when at last you came, I should know your footfall; yes, I should know it ever so far away. You would not be thinking of me just then. And when you came to the top of the golden stairs, there—there, all so suddenly, would be your little lass, with her arms ready to welcome you!"
The door of the cell creaked open.
The jailer appeared. "It is time!" he said, curtly, and stood waiting. We stood up, and I looked in her eyes. She was smiling, dry-eyed, but I—the water was running down my face.
"You will be brave, Hugo, for my sake. Next to life with you—to die by your dear hand, knowing that you love me, is the best gift they could have given me. They thought to hurt, but instead they have made me so happy. Till we meet again, dear love—till we meet soon again!"
And she accompanied me to the door, and kissed me as I went out, standing smilingly on tiptoe to do it, even as of old she was wont to do in the Red Tower.
And the last thing I saw of her, as the door closed upon the darkness of the cell, was my love standing smiling up at me, her eyes filled with the splendors of the love that casteth out fear.
CHAPTER LI
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE MORN
Even as the dwarf on the ledge of the castle clocktower creaked his wires and clicked back his hammer to strike the midnight over the city, even as the first solemn toll of the hour reverberated over the Wolfsberg, I was at the door of the Duke's room waiting for admission.
The Chamberlain in attendance looked within, and seeing his master writing at a table, he was going out again without speech.