so
absorbed that he felt no surprise. As food was what she wanted he set
before her everything in their little larder; and while she was eating
like one famished he forgot her presence completely. The two once so
sociable persons were for a while dumb to each other.

At length, however, having satisfied her ravenous hunger, she commenced
to speak of the changes which the Revolution had brought to them and to
wonder at his strange want of interest, when the noise of a mob crowding
around the door was heard.

Lecour saw what might happen.

"Fly, Mademoiselle," he said; "in the courtyard there is a door on the
left, take it and pass into the next house where are good people who
will not abandon you. I must stay here."

He then went to the door at which pikes and gun-stocks were beating.

"Citizens, I am the only person in the house," said he, at an opening
they had broken in one of the panels. "What do you wish?"

For answer several pikes were thrown in; he stepped back beyond their
reach, calmly fronting the fierce faces.

"Tell me what you want. I am ready to do your will."

There was a short period of indecision outside. A muscular man in a
carmagnole swinging a formidable axe pushed forward and the others fell
back at his rough order.

"I arrest you, citizen Repentigny," said Hache, for it was he. "We mates
of Bec and Caron that you quartered have had it in for you for a long
time. I am a commissioner now, and they call this my domiciliary visit.
If you will come, I will see, on the faith of a brigand, that you get to
prison safely; if not, I will see that you don't. Do you come?"

Germain calculated the seconds he had been able to save for Mademoiselle
Richeval. They were ample.

He opened the door and gave himself up.

CHAPTER LI

LOVE ENDURETH ALL THINGS

Cyrene, when she found herself in darkness, had a confused idea that she
was waking from a dream and lying in her bed at the house in the Rue
Honore. Under that impression she drew a breath of relief. A curse from
a woman's voice somewhere near by made her realise the truth; the cry of
Dominique, "They have finished me!" and the circumstances of his
disappearance from her side returned vividly, and her heart sickened.
But misery is like a thermometer; after reaching a particular degree it
can fall but slightly lower. The death of Dominique only benumbed her
brain. Her next impression was that this place in which she lay must be
a dungeon,