pitiless eyes that stared straight into
hers. They distracted her. They terrified her. Yet every moment seemed
to her to be something gained. Through all the wild chaos of her
overstrung nerves she was listening, listening desperately, for the
sound of feet outside the door. If she could only withstand him for a
few short seconds! If only her strength would last!

But she was nearing exhaustion, and she knew it. Her brain had begun to
swim. She saw him in a blur before her quivering vision. The hand that
grasped the rapier was too numbed to obey her behests. Suddenly there
came a tumult in the corridor without--a hoarse yelling and the rush of
many feet. It was the sound she had been listening for, but it startled,
it unnerved her. And in that instant Pierre thrust through her guard and
with a lightning twist of the wrist sent her weapon hurtling through the
air.

The sound of its fall was lost in the clamour outside the door--a
clamour so sudden and so horrible that it did for Stephanie that which
nothing else on earth could have accomplished. It drove her to the man
she hated for protection.

As he flung down the foil, she made a swift move towards him. There was
no longer shrinking in her eyes. She was simply a trembling,
panic-stricken woman, turning instinctively to the stronger power for
help. A little earlier she could have died without a tremor, but the
wild strife of the past few minutes had broken down her fortitude. Her
strength was gone.

"Monsieur!" she panted. "Monsieur!"

He caught her roughly to him. Even in that moment of deadly peril there
was a certain fiery exultation about him. He held her fast, his eyes
gazing straight down into hers.

"Shall I save you?" he said. "I can die with you--if you prefer it."

"Save me!" she cried piteously. "Save me!"

He bent his head, and suddenly, fiercely, savagely, he kissed her white
lips. Then, before she could utter cry or protest, he whirled her across
the room to the open window, catching up her cloak as he went; and,
almost before the horror of his kiss had dawned upon her, she was out
upon the balcony, alone with him in the awful dark.

He kept his hand upon her as he stepped over the stone railing, but all
power of independent action seemed to have left her. She was as one
stunned or beneath some spell. She stood quite rigid while he groped for
and found the ladder by which he had ascended. Then, as he lifted her,
she let herself go into his arm