She had already seized a cloak from a recess: in a moment they were speeding on their way together. He talked to her as they hurried on--half unconsciously, almost hysterically. He told of his chance encounter, of Basile’s degradation, of anything or nothing. It was such emotional gabble as even reserved men vent during the first moments of respite from intolerable anguish. His voice echoed back from the silent houses. He did not even notice that the girl returned him never an answer, so assured was he now of her sympathy. The streets were curiously still and deserted, the familiar life of them all shrunk and cowering behind a thousand lightless blinds. Now and again phantom cries seemed wafted to them from remote quarters; now and again a glimmer of torches would flash from far perspectives, and travel a moment on the blackness and vanish. It was a weary way by which they must go. The man led his companion through the Place du Carousel down to the river, along the endless line of quays by the wash of night-bound waters, over the Isle St-Louis and the street of the two bridges; again, along the gloomy quay of St-Bernard, and so into the dark leafy boulevard that ran southwards to the thieves’ prison. And here, for the first time, a spectral suggestion, an attenuated wind of sounds, began to take shape and body; and here suddenly the girl gave a quick gasp, and jerked to a stop. “The Salpétrière!” she muttered, clutching her cloak to her throat. “The Salpétrière, Théroigne.” She seemed to turn her head and look at him. Then on again she went, and he followed. The noise increased to their every onward step. Ambiguous sounds resolved themselves into sounds unnamable. Dim light, seen phantomly ahead, flared out in a moment across their path, as if some hellish furnace were refuelling. And then, in an instant--as it were stokers labouring at the mouth of flame--a scurry of fantastic shapes, grotesquely busy about the entrance to a lighted yard, grew into their vision. Ned turned upon his companion. “Take my arm,” he said, in a ghastly voice. She shrank from him. “Not unless it is thou needst support,” she whispered. He seized her hand, and reached and drove into the thick of the bestial throng, dragging her after him. A horrible reek seemed to fasten upon his brain. “_Malédiction_!” shrieked a filthy Alsatian, whom he had sent reeling with his elbow; “but I will teach thee the answer to that!” He swung up a bloody cleaver, clearing a space about him. The girl, on the thought, ran under his guard. “Théroigne!” screamed a woman’s voice across the yard. “It is la belle Liégeoise--our little amazon!” Her cloak had fallen apart. She was revealed to these her friends. At the word, a roar went up from the mob; the offending patriot was struck down, trampled upon; the girl herself stamped upon his face. “Hither!” screamed the voice again, “to the best seats in all the theatre!”