with relief that she
didn't offer to move, though animation was returning to her and her lips
had remained parted in an awful, unintended effect of a smile. And I
don't know whether I was pleased when she, who was not to be touched,
gripped my wrist suddenly. It had the air of being done on purpose
because almost instantly another: "Beloved!" louder, more agonized if
possible, got into the room and, yes, went home to my heart. It was
followed without any transition, preparation, or warning, by a positively
bellowed: "Speak, perjured beast!" which I felt pass in a thrill right
through Dona Rita like an electric shock, leaving her as motionless as
before.

Till he shook the door handle, which he did immediately afterwards, I
wasn't certain through which door he had spoken. The two doors (in
different walls) were rather near each other. It was as I expected. He
was in the fencing-room, thoroughly aroused, his senses on the alert to
catch the slightest sound. A situation not to be trifled with. Leaving
the room was for us out of the question. It was quite possible for him
to dash round into the hall before we could get clear of the front door.
As to making a bolt of it upstairs there was the same objection; and to
allow ourselves to be chased all over the empty house by this maniac
would have been mere folly. There was no advantage in locking ourselves
up anywhere upstairs where the original doors and locks were much
lighter. No, true safety was in absolute stillness and silence, so that
even his rage should be brought to doubt at last and die expended, or
choke him before it died; I didn't care which.

For me to go out and meet him would have been stupid. Now I was certain
that he was armed. I had remembered the wall in the fencing-room
decorated with trophies of cold steel in all the civilized and savage
forms; sheaves of assegais, in the guise of columns and grouped between
them stars and suns of choppers, swords, knives; from Italy, from
Damascus, from Abyssinia, from the ends of the world. Ortega had only to
make his barbarous choice. I suppose he had got up on the bench, and
fumbling about amongst them must have brought one down, which, falling,
had produced that rattling noise. But in any case to go to meet him
would have been folly, because, after all, I might have been overpowered
(even with bare hands) and then Dona Rita would have been left utterly
defenceless.

"He will speak," came to me the