on to please me, but if she
_would_ die, then to be sure to die near me. Tears were pouring down my
face, when, turning, I saw her standing in a terrified pose hardly two
feet behind me. The absolute stealth which had brought and put her
there, unknown to me, was like miracle: for the ladder, whose top I saw
intruding into the open oriel, I knew well, having often seen it in a
room below, and its length was quite thirty feet, nor could its weight
be trifling: yet I had heard not one hint of its impact upon the window.
But there, at all events, she was, wan as a ghost.

Immediately, as my consciousness realised her, my hand instinctively
went out to secure the weapon: but she darted upon it, and was an
instant before me. I flew after her to wrench it away, but she flew,
too: and before I caught her, had thrown it cleanly through two rungs of
the ladder and the window. I dashed to the window, and after a hurried
peer thought that I saw it below at the foot of a rock; away I flew to
the stair-door, wrung open the lock, and down the stairs, three at a
time, I ran to recover it. I remember being rather surprised that she
did not follow, forgetting all about the ladder.

But with a horrid shock I was reminded of it the moment I reached the
bottom, before ever I had passed from the house: for I heard the report
of the weapon--that crack, my God! and crying out: 'Well, Lord, she has
died for me, then!' I tottered forward, and tumbled upon her, where she
lay under the incline of the ladder in her blood.

* * * * *

That night! what a night it was! of fingers shivering with haste, of
harum-scarum quests and searches, of groans, and piteous appeals to God.
For there were no surgical instruments, lint, anaesthetics, nor
antiseptics that I knew of in the Chateau; and though I knew of a house
in Montreux where I could find them, the distance was quite infinite,
and the time an eternity in which to leave her all alone, bleeding to
death; and, to my horror, I remembered that there was barely enough
petrol in the motor, and the store usually kept in the house exhausted.
However, I did it, leaving her there unconscious on her bed: but _how_ I
did it, and lived sane afterwards, that is another matter.

If I had not been a medical man, she must, I think, have died: for the
bullet had broken the left fifth rib, had been deflected, and I found
it buried in the upper part of the abdominal wall. I did not go