The sense of the dramatic leaped through the blood of both. Dunvegan glowed with the hectic pulse of old desire, but his cold reserve was maintained by a nerve-wrenching effort.
"You do not dream," he ventured in a measured tone. "I am a strict reality, though an intruding one."
At the sound of his voice Desirée dropped her loaded pistol on the bed. Her tense body shivered, as if at escape from menace or danger. She covered her face with her hands. The full bosom worked in a paroxysm of sobs.
"My God! My God!" she moaned, her words coming like a prayer.
Dunvegan set the candle on a nearby stool and leaned back with folded arms against the door jamb. Thus could he the better control himself, for Desirée's weeping tore his fibres. Irrelevantly he noted that she was not prepared for slumber, but wore a flowing, open-throated day dress. This fact added to Bruce's mystification.
Presently Desirée glanced up, an expression of fear succeeding the despair in her face. She rushed swiftly across the chamber to Dunvegan, her hands extended appealingly.
"Go," she pleaded. "Go before someone hears you! How you learned—how you got here is nothing. Only go! Do you know what danger you stand in?"
"No," Bruce answered grimly. "I am not aware of any."
Her beauty even in tears burned its image in his tortured soul. To clasp her tight would have given both physical and mental relief, but his fingers clenched hard on his flexed biceps; he did not unfold his arms.
"Are you mad?" she cried earnestly, tempestuously. "You enter a Nor'west fort! You force in the door of the factor's apartment! And why? How did you find out I was here—and alone?"