The end had come, and there was nothing more to be done. Struggling,
fighting, scheming, could be of no avail now; but she wanted to get to
her husband; she wanted to be near him now that death was so imminent
both for him and for her.

She tried to envisage it all, quite calmly, just as she knew that Percy
would wish her to do. The inevitable end was there, and she would
not give to these callous wretches here the gratuitous spectacle of a
despairing woman fighting blindly against adverse Fate.

But she wanted to go to her husband. She felt that she could face death
more easily on the morrow if she could but see him once, if she could
but look once more into the eyes that had mirrored so much enthusiasm,
such absolute vitality and whole-hearted self-sacrifice, and such an
intensity of love and passion; if she Could but kiss once more those
lips that had smiled through life, and would smile, she knew, even in
the face of death.

She tried to open the carriage door, but it was held from without, and a
harsh voice cursed her, ordering her to sit still.

But she could lean out of the window and strain her eyes to see. They
were by now accustomed to the gloom, the dilated pupils taking in
pictures of vague forms moving like ghouls in the shadows. The other
coach was not far, and she could hear Heron's voice, still subdued and
calm, and the curses of the men. But not a sound from Percy.

"I think the prisoner is unconscious," she heard one of the men say.

"Lift him out of the carriage, then," was Heron's curt command; "and you
go and throw open the chapel gates."

Marguerite saw it all. The movement, the crowd of men, two vague, black
forms lifting another one, which appeared heavy and inert, out of the
coach, and carrying it staggering up towards the chapel.

Then the forms disappeared, swallowed up by the more dense mass of the
little building, merged in with it, immovable as the stone itself.

Only a few words reached her now.

"He is unconscious."

"Leave him there, then; he'll not move!"

"Now close the gates!"

There was a loud clang, and Marguerite gave a piercing scream. She tore
at the handle of the carriage door.

"Armand, Armand, go to him!" she cried; and all her self-control, all
her enforced calm, vanished in an outburst of wild, agonising passion.
"Let me get to him, Armand! This is the end; get me to him, in the name
of God!"

"Stop that woman screaming," came Heron's voice clearly through