rowd
around us. De Chaumont and the Marquis de Ferrier gave chase. I saw them
following, as well as they could.

"This used to be the queen's dressing-room," said Eagle. We entered the
last one in the suite.

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure."

"This is the room you told me you would like to examine?"

"The very one. I don't believe the Empire has made any changes in it.
These painted figures look just as Sophie described them."

Eagle traced lightly with her finger one of the shepherdesses dancing on
the panel; and crossed to the opposite side of the room. People who
passed the door found nothing to interest them, and turned away, but the
gendarme stayed beside us. Eagle glanced at him as if resenting his
intrusion, and asked me to bring her a candle and hold it near a mark
on the tracery. The gendarme himself, apologetic but firm, stepped to
the sconce and took the candle. I do not know how the thing was done, or
why the old spring and long unused hinges did not stick, but his back
was toward us--she pushed me against the panel and it let me in.

And I held her and drew her after me, and the thing closed. The wall had
swallowed us.

We stood on firm footing as if suspended in eternity. No sound from the
swarming palace, not even possible noise made by the gendarme, reached
us. It was like being earless, until she spoke in the hollow.

"Here's the door on the staircase, but it will not open!"

I groped over every inch of it with swift haste in the blackness.

"Hurry--hurry!" she breathed. "He may touch the spring himself--it moves
instantly!"

"Does this open with a spring, too?"

"I don't know. Sophie didn't know!"

"Are you sure there is any door here?"

"She told me there was."

"This is like a door, but it will not move."

It sprang inward against us, a rush of air and a hollow murmur as of
wind along the river, following it.

"Go--be quick!" said Madame de Ferrier.

"But how will you get out?"

"I shall get out when you are gone."

"O, Eagle, forgive me!" (Yet I would have dragged her in with me again!)

"I am in no danger. You are in danger. Goodbye, my liege."

Cautiously she pushed me through the door, begging me to feel for every
step. I stood upon the top one, and held to her as I had held to her in
passing through the other wall.

I thought of the heavy days before her and the blank before me. I could
not let go her wrists. We were fools to waste our youth. I could work
for her in