vy breathing was coming up the
stairway. She crept on tiptoe across the passage to the curtains
beside the casement.

Then a man was within touch of her hand, panting hard, and he stood
still as if he were out of breath. His voice called in gasps to the
knave at the end of the gallery:

'Ho ... There ... Simon!... Peter!... Hath one passed that way?'

The voice came back:

'No one! The King comes!'

He moved a step down the corridor and, as he was lifting the arras a
little way away, she moved to peep through a crack in the curtain.

It was Throckmorton! The distant light glinted along his beard. At the
slight movement she made he was agog to listen, so that his ears
appeared to be pricked up. He moved swiftly back to cover the
stairhead. In the distance, beneath the light, the groom was laying
cards upon the floor between his parted legs.

Throckmorton whispered suddenly:

'I can hear thee breathe. Art near! Listen!'

She leant back against the wall and trembled.

'This seems like a treachery,' he whispered. 'It is none. Listen?
There is little time! Do you hear me?'

She kept her peace.

'Do you hear me?' he asked. 'Before God, I am true to you.'

When still she did not speak he hissed with vexation and raised one
hand above his head. He sank his forehead in swift meditation.

'Listen,' he said again. 'To take you I have only to tear down this
arras. Do you hear?'

He bared his head once more and said aloud to himself,

'But perhaps she is even in the chapel.'

He stepped across the corridor, lifted a latch and looked in at double
doors that were just beside her. Then, swiftly, he moved back once
more to cover the stairhead.

'God! God! God!' she heard him mutter between his teeth.

'Listen!' he said again. 'Listen! listen! listen!' The words seemed
to form part of an eager, hissed refrain. He was trembling with haste.

He began to press the arras, along the wall towards her, with his
finger tips. Her breast sank with a sickening fall. Then, suddenly, he
started back again; she could not understand why he did not come
further--then she noticed that he was afraid, still, to leave the
stairhead.

But why did he not call his men to him? He had a whole army at his
back.

He was peering into the shadows--and something familiar in the poise
of his head, his intent gaze, the line of his shoulders, as you may
see a cat's outlined against a lighted doorway, filled her with an
intense lust for reve