her own.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE LIFTING OF THE MASK

Out of a curious numbness that had almost been a swoon there came to
her the consciousness of a hand that rapped and rapped and rapped
upon the pane. She had fled away to the farther end of the room in her
panic. She had turned the lamp low at the beginning of the storm, and
now it burned so dimly that it scarcely gave out any light at all.
Beyond the window, the lightning flashed with an awful luridness
upon the rushing hail. Beyond the window, looking in upon her, and
knocking, knocking, knocking, stood the figure of her dread.

She came to herself slowly, with a quaking heart. It was more horrible
to her than anything she had known since the days of her flight
from the beleaguered fort; but she knew that she must fight down her
horror, she knew as certainly as if a physical force compelled her
that she would have to go to the window, would have to open to the man
who waited there.

Slowly she brought her quivering body into subjection, while every
nerve twitched and clamoured to escape. Slowly she dragged herself
back to the vision that had struck her with that paralysis of terror.
Resisting feebly, invisibly compelled, she went.

He ceased to knock, and, his face against the pane, he spoke
imperatively. What he said, she could not hear in that tumult of
mighty sound. Only she felt his insistence, answered to it, was
mastered by it.

White-faced, with horror clutching at her heart, she undid the catch.
His one hand, strong, instinct with energy, helped her to raise the
sash. In a moment he was in the room, bare-headed, drenched from head
to foot.

She fell back before him, but he scarcely looked at her. He shut
the window sharply, then strode to the lamp, and turned it up.
Then, abruptly he wheeled and spoke in a voice half-kindly,
half-contemptuous. "Muriel, you're a little idiot!"

There was little in the words to comfort her, yet she was instantly
and vastly reassured. She was also for the moment overwhelmingly
ashamed, but he did not give her time to think of that.

"I couldn't get in any other way," he said. "I tried the doors first,
hammered at them, but no one came. Look here! Olga is ill, very ill,
and she wants you badly. Are you brave enough to come?"

"Oh!" Muriel said, with a gasp. "Now, do you mean? With--with you?"

He threw her an odd look under his flickering eyelids, and she noted
with a scared minuteness of attention the gle