!"--he murmured.

"My love, my love!"

But at length she came to herself, she remembered. "You will go?" she
said. She put him from her and held him fondly at arm's length, her
hands on his shoulders. "You will go? It is all you can do for me. You
will go and live?"

"Without you?"

"Yes. Better, a hundred times better so--for me."

"And for me? Why may I not save you and her?"

"It is impossible!"

"Nothing is impossible to love," he answered. "The nights are long, the
wall is not too high! No wall is too high for love! It is but a league
to the frontier, and I am strong."

"Who would receive us?" she asked sadly. "Who would shelter us? In
Savoy, if we were not held for sorcery, we should be delivered to the
Inquisition."

"We might gain friends?"

"With what? No," she continued, her hands cleaving more tightly to him;
"you must go, dear love! Dear love! You must go! It is all you can do
for me, and it is much! Oh, indeed, it is much! It is very much!"

He drew her to him as near as the settle would permit, until she was
kneeling on it, and in spite of her faint resistance he could look into
her eyes. "Were you in my place, would you leave me?" he asked.

"Yes," she lied bravely, "I would."

But the flash of resentment in her eyes gave her voice the lie, and he
laughed joyfully. "You would not!" he said. "You would not leave me on
this side of death!"

She tried to protest.

"Nor will I you," he continued, stopping her mouth with fresh kisses.
"Nor will I you till death! Did you think me a coward?" He held her from
him and looked into her reproachful eyes. "Or a Tissot? Tissot left you.
Or Louis Gentilis?"

But she made him know that he was none of these in a way that satisfied
him; and a moment later her mother's voice called her from the room. He
thought, having no experience of a woman's will, that he had done with
that; and in her absence he betook himself to examining the defences of
the house. He replaced the bar which he had wrested from the window;
wedging it into its socket with a morsel or two of molten lead. The
windows of the bedrooms, his own and Louis', looked into a narrow lane,
the Rue de la Cite, that ran at the back of the Corraterie in a line
with the ramparts; but not only were they almost too small to permit the
passage of a full-grown man, they were strongly barred. Against such a
rabble, as had assaulted Anne, or even a more formidable mob, the house
was secure. But if the l