Yuki went across the room from him. He, frowning slightly at the delay, stood as he had been standing, his back squarely to the office-door, his left shoulder toward the opened French window. Yuki, not ten yards before him, had reached the wall where the electric button was set. She raised a slim hand to it, but before she could press it, a certain flicker as of an animated shadow moving in the room behind Haganè drew her curious and anxious glance. The outstretched arm fell, paralyzed. She attempted to speak, to cry aloud, but her throat had turned to cork. Pierre Le Beau was creeping into the room like a thief, a cat, skirting the wall in the direction of the office-door. He caught her frozen stare of terror, and made a defiant gesture, commanding silence.
Haganè raised his head. The delay puzzled him. He had been examining again the crimson seal. The look on his wife's face, come with such terrific suddenness, sent something almost like fear through his heart. He thrust the paper in his breast, and turned to scan the room. Pierre was in the safe shelter of the columnar, massed portière.
Yuki clawed and mowed her way through a jungle of fire toward her lord. "Master, master!" she whispered hoarsely. She could say no more, and fell prone on her knees before him, reaching upward for his grasp.
"What ails you, child? In the name of Shaka, what has hurt you?" He bent to raise her, but she grovelled, eluding his hands.
"I am ill, very ill; let us go quickly to our chamber," she managed to choke out. Now she fluttered backward, luring him, like a wounded bird, her long, gray sleeves trailing after.
"In Shaka's name!" he cried again, "I cannot understand the suddenness."
Pierre now left the portière, and stole softly toward the bent back of the prince. Yuki thought him mad, with a new strength and cunning of murderous intent. She sprang up to her feet, hurling all her slight weight against Haganè with such force that he swerved. With a movement like light she had passed him, set her back to his, and was facing Pierre. "Here—here—kill me—not him—" she panted. "I am ready; I do not fear. See how white my breast and soft! Oh, blood will look so pretty here,—like the red seal!" She tore aside the dove-gray folds of her gown.
Haganè, wheeling to them, half drew the paper from his breast. The Frenchman saw, and as Haganè turned, lowered his head so that his face might still be hidden, reached out a hand, and, with one demon-directed dart of the nervous fingers had touched, had clutched, had wrenched away the long white screed of fate that bore a single drop of blood.
For one awful crash of time, the solid earth split beneath the statesman's feet. Pierre had gone through the low window like a breeze, and his flying track through the shrubs stirred them scarcely more. Haganè staggered as his mind confirmed this strange, annihilating loss. A moment more and he was again calm master of his fate. He took Yuki by a shoulder, held her from him, and scorching her eyes with the scorn of his, said steadily, "So this is what ailed you, Princess Haganè! Why did you give no warning? Tell me the name of the thief."
Yuki blinked and moved her head backward and forward through the air. She put up a hand to her throat of cork, and smoothed it.