audacity. She was pointing at a piece of paper, like the half-sheet of a
letter with some faint pencil scrawls that might have been a jotting of
the amounts we were spending during the day. And I was extremely happy
at her gaiety, in her triumph, in her audacity. Captain Ashburnham had
his hands upon the glass case. "There it is--the Protest." And then, as
we all properly stage-managed our bewilderment, she continued: "Don't
you know that is why we were all called Protestants? That is the pencil
draft of the Protest they drew up. You can see the signatures of Martin
Luther, and Martin Bucer, and Zwingli, and Ludwig the Courageous...."

I may have got some of the names wrong, but I know that Luther and Bucer
were there. And her animation continued and I was glad. She was better
and she was out of mischief. She continued, looking up into Captain
Ashburnham's eyes: "It's because of that piece of paper that you're
honest, sober, industrious, provident, and clean-lived. If it weren't
for that piece of paper you'd be like the Irish or the Italians or the
Poles, but particularly the Irish...."

And she laid one finger upon Captain Ashburnham's wrist.

I was aware of something treacherous, something frightful, something
evil in the day. I can't define it and can't find a simile for it. It
wasn't as if a snake had looked out of a hole. No, it was as if my heart
had missed a beat. It was as if we were going to run and cry out; all
four of us in separate directions, averting our heads. In Ashburnham's
face I know that there was absolute panic. I was horribly frightened and
then I discovered that the pain in my left wrist was caused by Leonora's
clutching it:

"I can't stand this," she said with a most extraordinary passion; "I
must get out of this." I was horribly frightened. It came to me for
a moment, though I hadn't time to think it, that she must be a madly
jealous woman--jealous of Florence and Captain Ashburnham, of all people
in the world! And it was a panic in which we fled! We went right down
the winding stairs, across the immense Rittersaal to a little terrace
that overlooks the Lahn, the broad valley and the immense plain into
which it opens out.

"Don't you see?" she said, "don't you see what's going on?" The panic
again stopped my heart. I muttered, I stuttered--I don't know how I got
the words out:

"No! What's the matter? Whatever's the matter?"

She looked me straight in the eyes; and for a moment I had th