with every instant that the
surcharged veins would burst; hands of steel seemed to crush in upon his
chest, knotted cords to tighten in excruciating pain about his loins; he
breathed in short, convulsive gasps; his eyes were blind, and his head
swam. A dreaming fancy that this was death vaguely came on him, and he
was glad it should be so.

His eyelids closed unconsciously, weighed down as by the weight of lead;
he saw the starry skies above him no more, and the distant noise of the
pursuit waxed duller and duller on his ear; then he lost all sense and
memory--he ceased even to feel the night air on his face. How long he
lay there he never knew; when consciousness returned to him all was
still; the moon was shining down clear as the day, the west wind was
blowing softly among his hair. He staggered to his feet and leaned
against the timber of the upper wall; the shelving, impenetrable
darkness sloped below; above were the glories of a summer sky at
midnight, around him the hills and woods were bathed in the silver
light; he looked, and he remembered all.

He had escaped his captors; but for how long? While yet there were some
hours of the night left, he must find some surer refuge, or fall into
their hands again. Yet it was strange that in this moment his own
misery and his own peril were less upon him than a longing to see once
more--and for the last time--the woman for whose sake he suffered this.
Their love had had the lightness and the languor of their world, and had
had but little depth in it; yet, in that hour of his supreme sacrifice
to her, he loved her as he had not loved in his life.

Recklessness had always been latent in him, with all his serenity and
impassiveness; a reckless resolve entered him now--reckless to madness.
Lightly and cautiously, though his sinews still ached, and his nerves
still throbbed with the past strain, he let himself fall, hand over
hand, as men go down a rope, along the woodwork to the ground. Once
touching earth, off he glided, swiftly and noiselessly, keeping in the
shadow of the walls all the length of the streets he took, and shunning
every place where any sort of tumult could suggest the neighborhood of
those who were out and hunting him down. As it chanced, they had taken
to the open country; he passed on unquestioned, and wound his way to the
Kursaal. He remembered that to-night there was a masked ball, at which
all the princely and titled world of Baden were present; to wh