"Surely it were shame enough for any woman to find herself made part of such a bargain. But my humiliation goes even deeper, for I must parade my poor wares before you like any huckster, beseeching you to buy. My lord, it is for your life, and I am but a flower that it may please you to wear to-day and cast aside to-morrow. Buy of me, my lord, and at what price you will—it is for your life. But be quick; he will not wait over-long." She plucked at his sleeve. "Do you not understand? The men are coming; you can hear the rattle of the sheaf-blocks at the mast-head of the galley—Constans!"
But Constans looked only at his enemy, Quinton Edge. "I am ready," he said, coldly.
Esmay passed through the long window and so into the drawing-room. To her overly excited senses the signal was already sounding in her ears, and a gradual faintness mounted to her brain, even as water rises about the swimmer advancing through the shingle to the first shock of the surge. Then, in deadly truth, she heard Quinton Edge blow his whistle, and the darkness closed in upon her.
For the second time the Doomsman raised the pipe to his lips. It slipped from his fingers and fell to the garden-table at his side.
As he bent to recover it the subtle, uprising scent of the May-bloom struck him like a blow; a dark flush overspread his brow. He spoke, quickly, insistently:
"The canoe is still at the landing-stage. Go, while there is yet time."
He seized Constans by the shoulders, slewing him around and pushing him towards the steps that led to the terrace.
"Go, and forget all that you have seen and heard in Doom the Forbidden. You and your secrets are known; be content to leave my people with theirs. And to me my memories."
The madness of protest, of resistance, was still upon Constans, and yet he found himself yielding to this stronger will. Mechanically, he leaped to the terrace below, and from thence ran on to the landing-stage just as Kurt, the Knacker hobbled around the corner of the house at the head of a squad of sailors from the Black Swan. An arrow or two flew wild, but Constans quickly had the boat in the current, which was running out on a strong ebb-tide, and so was safe from further molestation. Half a mile down-stream he ventured to make a landing. The dozen or so of rifles and store of ammunition that he had left in hiding at this point were too precious a treasure to be abandoned without an effort. Yet hardly had he transferred the last case of cartridges to his boat than he became aware that the Doomsmen were close upon him, and this time he got a bruised shoulder from a spent cross-bolt by way of a parting salute. The canoe was heavily laden, but fortunately the wind had gone down with the sun, and the water was unusually smooth. Constans bent to his paddle, shaping his course to the southwest, the direction of his old home on the West Inch.
How cool and pure the air! How clean and sweet the stars that shone above him! Little by little the fever and the fret of life departed from him, and he was at peace. He wondered now at the madness that had possessed him, at the passion that had thrilled him at the touch of a woman's hand. He had come so near to proving himself a traitor, a recreant to all that was sacred in his life. And then a hound had bayed, and a girl had laughed, and the shining bubble had vanished into the air. Beguiled, betricked, betrayed—base repetition of the ancient injury. What a fool he had been!