A wooden settle stood against the wall just beneath the window, and I knelt on it and drove at the shutters with my shoulder. They gave a little at first, and I heard a whispered call for help. The pressure from without was redoubled; I was forced back; a bar fell across them outside and was fitted into a socket. Thrust as I might I could not break it; the window was securely barricadoed. Meanwhile Ilga had not spoken. "Ilga!" I called. She did not answer me, nor in the blackness of the pavilion could I discover where she stood. "Ilga!" The same empty silence. I could not even hear her breathing, and yet she was in the pavilion, within a few feet of me. There was something horrible in her quietude, and a great fear of I knew not what caught at my heart and turned my blood cold. "This is the priest's doing," I cried, and I drew my sword and made towards the door. A startled cry burst from the gloom behind me. "Stop! If you open it, you will be killed." I stopped as she bade me, body and brain numbed in a common inaction. I could hear her breathing now plainly enough. "This is not the priest's doing," she said, at length. "It is the wife's." Her voice steadied and became even as she spoke. "From the hour I found Count Lukstein dead I have lived only for this night." I let my sword slip from my grasp, and it clattered and rang on the floor. 'Twas not surprise that I felt; ever since the shutters had been slammed I seemed to have known that she would speak those words. And 'twas no longer fear. Nor did I as yet wonder how she came by her knowledge. Indeed, I had but one thought, one thought of overwhelming sadness, and I voiced it in utter despondency. "So all this time--in London, here, a minute ago, you were tricking me! Tricking me into loving you; then tricking my love for you!" "A minute ago!" she caught me up, and there was a quiver in her voice of some deep feeling. Then she broke off, and said, in a hard, clear tone: "I was a woman, and alone. I used a woman's weapons." Again she paused, but I made no answer. I had none to make. She resumed, with a flash of anger, as though my silence accused her: "And was there no trickery on your side, too?" They were almost the same words as those which Marston had levelled at me, and I imagined that they conveyed the same charge. However, it seemed of little use or profit to defend myself at length, and I answered: