ponent.

"Then if you know it," he cried vehemently, "in God's name act upon it!"
And he pointed to the window.

"Act upon it?"

"Ay, act upon it!" Tavannes repeated, with a glance of flame. "The road
is open! If you would save your mistress, behold the way! If you would
save her from the embrace she abhors, from the eyes under which she
trembles, from the hand of a master, there lies the way! And it is not
her glove only you will save, but herself, her soul, her body! So," he
continued, with a certain wildness, and in a tone wherein contempt and
bitterness were mingled, "to the lions, brave lover! Will you your life
for her honour? Will you death that she may live a maid? Will you your
head to save her finger? Then, leap down! leap down! The lists are
open, the sand is strewed! Out of your own mouth I have it that if you
perish she is saved! Then out, Monsieur! Cry 'I am a Huguenot!' And
God's will be done!"

Tignonville was livid. "Rather, your will!" he panted. "Your will, you
devil! Nevertheless--"

"You will go! Ha! ha! You will go!"

For an instant it seemed that he would go. Stung by the challenge,
wrought on by the contempt in which Tavannes held him, he shot a look of
hate at the tempter; he caught his breath, and laid his hand on the edge
of the shuttering as if he would leap out.

But it goes hard with him who has once turned back from the foe. The
evening light, glancing cold on the burnished pike-points of a group of
archers who stood near, caught his eye and went chill to his heart.
Death, not in the arena, not in the sight of shouting thousands, but in
this darkening street, with an enemy laughing from the window, death with
no revenge to follow, with no certainty that after all she would be safe,
such a death could be compassed only by pure love--the love of a child
for a parent, of a parent for a child, of a man for the one woman in the
world!

He recoiled. "You would not spare her!" he cried, his face damp with
sweat--for he knew now that he would not go. "You want to be rid of me!
You would fool me, and then--"

"Out of your own mouth you are convict!" Count Hannibal retorted gravely.
"It was you who said it! But still I swear it! Shall I swear it to
you?"

But Tignonville recoiled another step and was silent.

"No? O _preux chevalier_, O gallant knight! I knew it! Do you think
that I did not know with whom I had to deal?" And Count Hannibal burst
into harsh