The tiny smile that broke then from her lips was my first earnest of her reality. The sigh she gave was such as a dead sleeper might yield to the dawn of Judgment. Yet she did not move, or come to me, or show one sign of the collapse I had expected and calculated on. And, as the light of the flaring taper fell upon her figure, a new hate and loathing surged in me, so that the persuasiveness with which I sought to dress my tones shivered into a mockery of itself-- “Did you not expect me? Did you not know that I hold your life in my hands?” “Else why should you have left me to come to this, Diana?” I shrunk back. What new knowledge of herself, or me, was implied in the chords of that wasted voice? Yet she smiled still, like one waking out of a frightful dream. “Is it not strange, Diana, this end to all we have known and experienced together? Do you remember the sundial, and the old green garden, and the nuns in the sleepy village? We are Englishwomen, after all, Diana. I should like to rest in England.” “It lies with yourself,” I answered, half choking. “You have but to speak--I tell you, it needs but a word from you, and all this false sacrifice is passed by and forgotten.” Her eyes had been fixed on some vision beyond me. Now in a moment they were scorching my soul. “Yes,” she said, “and the word?” The shame of its utterance should be mine, she meant. If I had shrunk from the challenge, it would have been to discredit my claim to the greater wrong. “Where your husband lies hidden?” I said, with a cold fury at my heart. “God forgive you,” she answered only, and fell back. Her assumption of the holier strength, of the worser grievance, stung me to madness. I leapt and clutched her by the wrist. “Fool!” I shrieked; “do you know what you are bringing on yourself? Do you know how they will kill you? It is not, as in Paris, a shock, and a sob, and forgetfulness. They will push you from a ladder, and one will spring and swing himself by your feet, and another leap upon your shoulders, and squat there like a hideous toad, making sport for the crowd. And you will be minutes choking and dying, and not one to pity or relieve you!” Her eyes had a smile of agony in them; but still it was a smile, and I could have torn myself in my impotence to change it. “Ah, yes, one!” she said; “my little unborn baby.” I sprang back. “Wretch! Your obstinacy murders it!” “It gives its life for its father!” Without sound or warning, she sank at my feet, and lay motionless, her white face turned upward. A harsh jest was uttered at my shoulder. “Bravo! It is so they always think to sport with our feelings. But we have an infallible medicine”--and the gaoler, coming from behind me, cut across the senseless face with his whip.