“Can you help me?”
“Yes; wait.”
She was down instantly, rolling the sheets and knotting them into a rope. The strands of her hair were under the pillow. She took them and wound them round the knots, and, making them fast to a bar, threw the end thereof out of the window. But the rope would not run by its own weight, and she had to thrust it out foot by foot, standing on the bed and leaning her bosom against the wall.
The rope tightened, the knot straining at the bar. Then a shadow blotted out the window.
“Dear heart!”
She stretched out her hands to him, and then drew them with a sharp sob into her bosom, bending down her head and feeling the old despair taking possession of her heart.
“Barbe!”
He had forced himself into the stone framing of the window, and she could hear him breathing hard with the grimness of the climb.
“Where are you, child?”
He lay there with his face to the bars, and heard nothing but sudden passionate weeping. The sound of it went through him to the heart. He stretched out an arm and was able to touch her hair.