"Let go," he growled, backing away and vainly disengaging now one of her hands and now the other. "My trowel's too silent." But she clung and dragged, speaking on wildly: "You know, Hilary, you know? _You love me_. Oh, no-no-no, don' look like that, I'm not crazee." Her deft hands had got the knife, but she tossed it into the work-basket: "Ah, Hilary Kincaid, oft-en we love where we thing we do not, and oft-en thing we love where we do not--" He would not hear: "Oh, Flora Valcour! You smother me in my own loathing--oh, God send that gun!" The four hands still strove. "Hilary, list-en me yet a moment. See me. Flora Valcour. Could Flora Valcour do like this--_ag-ains' the whole nature of a woman_--if she--?" "Stop! stop! you shall not--" "If she di'n' know, di'n' feel, di'n' see, thad you are loving her?" "Yet God knows I've never given cause, except as--" "A ladies' man?" prompted the girl and laughed. The blood surged to his brow. A wilder agony was on hers as he held her from him, rigid; "Enough!" he cried; "We're caged and doomed. Yet you still have this one moment to save us, _all of us_, from life-long shame and sorrow." She shook her head. "Yes, yes," he cried. "You can. I cannot. I'm helpless now and forever. What man or woman, if I could ever be so vile as to tell it, could believe the truth of this from me? In God's name, then, go!" He tenderly thrust her off: "Go, live to honor, happiness and true love, and let me--" "Ezcape, perchanze, to Anna?" "Yes, if I--" He ceased in fresh surprise. Not because she toyed with the dagger lying on Anna's needlework, for she seemed not to know she did it; but because of a strange brightness of assent as she nodded twice and again. "I will go," she said. Behind the brightness was the done-for look, plainer than ever, and with it yet another, a look of keen purpose, which the grandam would have understood. He saw her take the dirk, so grasping it as to hide it behind wrist and sleeve; but he said only, beseechingly, "Go!" "Stay," said another voice, and at the small opening still left in the wall, lo! the face of Greenleaf and the upper line of his blue and gilt shoulders. His gaze was on Flora. She could do nothing but gaze again. "I know, now," he continued, "your whole two-years' business. Stay just as you are till I can come round and in. Every guard is doubled and has special orders." She dropped into a seat, staring like one demented, now at door and windows, now from one man to the other, now to the floor, while Kincaid sternly said, "Colonel Greenleaf, the reverence due from any soldier to any lady--" and Greenleaf interrupted-- "The lady may be sure of." "And about this, Fred, you'll be--dumb?" "Save only to one, Hilary." "Where is she, Fred?" "On that boat, fancying herself disguised. Having you, we're only too glad not to have her." The retaken prisoner shone with elation: "And those fellows of last night?--got them back?" Greenleaf darkened, and shook his head.