arer. Would it draw nearer? Would it come
on? Or would it turn again?

The doubt, so much worse than despair, began to sap that courage of the
man which is always better fitted to do than to suffer. The sweat rose
on Tignonville's brow as he stood listening, his arm round the girl--as
he stood listening and waiting. It is possible that when he had said a
minute or two earlier that he would rather die a thousand times than live
thus shamed, he had spoken beyond the mark. Or it is possible that he
had meant his words to the full. But in this case he had not pictured
what was to come, he had not gauged correctly his power of passive
endurance. He was as brave as the ordinary man, as the ordinary soldier;
but martyrdom, the apotheosis of resignation, comes more naturally to
women than to men, more hardly to men than to women. Yet had the crisis
come quickly he might have met it. But he had to wait, and to wait with
that howling of wild beasts in his ears; and for this he was not
prepared. A woman might be content to die after this fashion; but a man?
His colour went and came, his eyes began to rove hither and thither. Was
it even now too late to escape? Too late to avoid the consequences of
the girl's silly persistence? Too late to--? Her eyes were closed, she
hung half lifeless on his arm. She would not know, she need not know
until afterwards. And afterwards she would thank him!
Afterwards--meantime the window was open, the street was empty, and still
the crowd hung back and did not come.

He remembered that two doors away was a narrow passage, which leaving the
Rue St. Honore turned at right angles under a beetling archway, to emerge
in the Rue du Roule. If he could gain that passage unseen by the mob! He
_would_ gain it. With a swift movement, his mind made up, he took a step
forward. He tightened his grasp of the girl's waist, and, seizing with
his left hand the end of the bar which the assailants had torn from its
setting in the window jamb, he turned to lower himself. One long step
would land him in the street.

At that moment she awoke from the stupor of exaltation. She opened her
eyes with a startled movement; and her eyes met his.

He was in the act of stepping backwards and downwards, dragging her after
him. But it was not this betrayed him. It was his face, which in an
instant told her all, and that he sought not death, but life! She
struggled upright and strove to free herself. But