Till he shook the door handle, which he did immediately afterwards, I wasn’t certain through which door he had spoken. The two doors (in different walls) were rather near each other. It was as I expected. He was in the fencing-room, thoroughly aroused, his senses on the alert to catch the slightest sound. A situation not to be trifled with. Leaving the room was for us out of the question. It was quite possible for him to dash round into the hall before we could get clear of the front door. As to making a bolt of it upstairs there was the same objection; and to allow ourselves to be chased all over the empty house by this maniac would have been mere folly. There was no advantage in locking ourselves up anywhere upstairs where the original doors and locks were much lighter. No, true safety was in absolute stillness and silence, so that even his rage should be brought to doubt at last and die expended, or choke him before it died; I didn’t care which. For me to go out and meet him would have been stupid. Now I was certain that he was armed. I had remembered the wall in the fencing-room decorated with trophies of cold steel in all the civilized and savage forms; sheaves of assegais, in the guise of columns and grouped between them stars and suns of choppers, swords, knives; from Italy, from Damascus, from Abyssinia, from the ends of the world. Ortega had only to make his barbarous choice. I suppose he had got up on the bench, and fumbling about amongst them must have brought one down, which, falling, had produced that rattling noise. But in any case to go to meet him would have been folly, because, after all, I might have been overpowered (even with bare hands) and then Doña Rita would have been left utterly defenceless. “He will speak,” came to me the ghostly, terrified murmur of her voice. “Take me out of the house before he begins to speak.” “Keep still,” I whispered. “He will soon get tired of this.” “You don’t know him.” “Oh, yes, I do. Been with him two hours.” At this she let go my wrist and covered her face with her hands passionately. When she dropped them she had the look of one morally crushed. “What did he say to you?” “He raved.” “Listen to me. It was all true!” “I daresay, but what of that?” These ghostly words passed between us hardly louder than thoughts; but after my last answer she ceased and gave me a searching stare, then drew in a long breath. The voice on the other side of the door burst out with an impassioned request for a little pity, just a little, and went on begging for a few words, for two words, for one word—one poor little word. Then it gave up, then repeated once more, “Say you are there, Rita, Say one word, just one word. Say ‘yes.’ Come! Just one little yes.” “You see,” I said. She only lowered her eyelids over the anxious glance she had turned on me.