ce, with its
martial moustache, the lofty forehead, the impassive features, and the
quiet, meditative eyes. Trapped! Confound it! After all, perhaps the
governor was right. Women had to be shunned. Fooling with this one had
apparently ruined the whole business. For, trapped as he was he might
just as well kill, since, anyhow, to be seen was to be unmasked. But he
was too fair-minded to be angry with the girl.

Heyst had paused on the veranda, or in the very doorway.

"I shall be shot down like a dog if I ain't quick," Ricardo muttered
excitedly to the girl.

He stooped to get hold of his knife; and the next moment would have
hurled himself out through the curtain, nearly, as prompt and fully as
deadly to Heyst as an unexpected thunderbolt. The feel more than the
strength of the girl's hand, clutching at his shoulder, checked him. He
swung round, crouching with a yellow upward glare. Ah! Was she turning
against him?

He would have stuck his knife into the hollow of her bare throat if
he had not seen her other hand pointing to the window. It was a long
opening, high up, close under the ceiling almost, with a single pivoting
shutter.

While he was still looking at it she moved noiselessly away, picking
up the overturned chair, and placed it under the wall. Then she looked
round; but he didn't need to be beckoned to. In two long, tiptoeing
strides he was at her side.

"Be quick!" she gasped.

He seized her hand and wrung it with all the force of his dumb
gratitude, as a man does to a chum when there is no time for words. Then
he mounted the chair. Ricardo was short--too short to get over without a
noisy scramble. He hesitated an instant; she, watchful, bore rigidly on
the seat with her beautiful bare arms, while, light and sure, he used
the back of the chair as a ladder. The masses of her brown hair fell all
about her face.

Footsteps resounded in the next room, and Heyst's voice, not very loud,
called her by name.

"Lena!"

"Yes! In a minute," she answered with a particular intonation which she
knew would prevent Heyst from coming in at once.

When she looked up, Ricardo had vanished, letting himself down outside
so lightly that she had not heard the slightest noise. She stood up
then, bewildered, frightened, as if awakened from a drugged sleep, with
heavy, downcast, unseeing eyes, her fortitude tired out, her imagination
as if dead within her and unable to keep her fear alive.

Heyst moved about aimlessly