self or to fly.

"I dragged myself toward the bed, to seek the only defense I had
left--my saving knife; but I could not reach the bolster. I sank on my
knees, my hands clasped round one of the bedposts; then I felt that I
was lost."

Felton became frightfully pale, and a convulsive tremor crept through
his whole body.

"And what was most frightful," continued Milady, her voice altered, as
if she still experienced the same agony as at that awful minute,
"was that at this time I retained a consciousness of the danger that
threatened me; was that my soul, if I may say so, waked in my sleeping
body; was that I saw, that I heard. It is true that all was like a
dream, but it was not the less frightful.

"I saw the lamp ascend, and leave me in darkness; then I heard the
well-known creaking of the door although I had heard that door open but
twice.

"I felt instinctively that someone approached me; it is said that the
doomed wretch in the deserts of America thus feels the approach of the
serpent.

"I wished to make an effort; I attempted to cry out. By an incredible
effort of will I even raised myself up, but only to sink down again
immediately, and to fall into the arms of my persecutor."

"Tell me who this man was!" cried the young officer.

Milady saw at a single glance all the painful feelings she inspired in
Felton by dwelling on every detail of her recital; but she would not
spare him a single pang. The more profoundly she wounded his heart, the
more certainly he would avenge her. She continued, then, as if she had
not heard his exclamation, or as if she thought the moment was not yet
come to reply to it.

"Only this time it was no longer an inert body, without feeling, that
the villain had to deal with. I have told you that without being able to
regain the complete exercise of my faculties, I retained the sense of my
danger. I struggled, then, with all my strength, and doubtless opposed,
weak as I was, a long resistance, for I heard him cry out, 'These
miserable Puritans! I knew very well that they tired out their
executioners, but I did not believe them so strong against their
lovers!'

"Alas! this desperate resistance could not last long. I felt my strength
fail, and this time it was not my sleep that enabled the coward to
prevail, but my swoon."

Felton listened without uttering any word or sound, except an inward
expression of agony. The sweat streamed down his marble forehead, and
his hand, under hi