He hesitated.
"You are not afraid to be left?" he said. "You are sure?"

"I am afraid of nothing if I know you safe," she answered faintly. "Go!
go quickly, and God be with you!"

"Tut! I run no danger," he rejoined. "I have a strong arm and they will
leave me alone." He thought that she was overwrought, that the strain
was telling on her; his thoughts did not go beyond that. "I shall be
back in five minutes," he continued cheerfully. And he went, bidding her
lock the door behind him and open only at his knock.

He made the more haste for her fears, passed into the town through the
Porte Tertasse, and hastened to the conduit. The open space in front of
the fountain, which a little later in the day would be the favourite
resort of gossips and idlers, was a desert; the bitter morning wind saw
to that. But about the fountain itself three or four women closely
muffled were waiting their turns to draw. One looked up, and, as he
fancied, recognised him, for she nudged her neighbour. And then first
the one woman and then the other, looking askance, muttered something;
it might have been a prayer, or a charm, or a mere word of gossip. But
he liked neither the glance nor the action, nor the furtive, curious
looks of the women; and as quickly as he could he filled his pot and
carried it away.

He had splashed his fingers, and the cold wind quickly numbed them. At
the Tertasse Gate, where the view commanding the river valley opened
before him, he was glad to set down the vessel and change hands. On his
left, the watch at the Porte Neuve, the gate in the ramparts which
admitted from the country to the Corraterie--as the Tertasse admitted
from the Corraterie to the town proper--was being changed, and he paused
an instant, gazing on the scene. Then remembering himself, and the need
of haste, he snatched up his jar and, turning to the right, hurried to
the steps before the Royaumes' door, swung up them and, with his eyes
on the windows, set down his burden.

He knocked gently, sure that she would not keep him waiting. But she did
not come at once; and by-and-by, seeing that a woman at an open door a
little farther down the Corraterie was watching him with scowling
eyes--and that strange look, half fear, half loathing, which he was
growing to know--he knocked more loudly, and stamped to warm his feet.

Still, to his astonishment, she did not come; he waited, and waited, and
she did not come. He would have begun to feel alarmed fo