Yet he was to escape me--with small pain to me, I confess. For at the moment a cry rang loud in my ear: I knew the voice; and though I kept my foot on Pierre's pistol, yet I turned my head. And on the instant the fellow sprang to his feet, and, with an agility that I could not have matched, started running across the sands toward the Mount. Before I had realized what he was about, he had thirty yards' start of me. I heard the water rushing in now; he must wade deep, nay, he must swim to win the Mount. But from me he was safe, for I was no such runner as he. Yet, had he and I been alone, I would have pursued him. But the cry rang out again, and, giving no more thought to him, I turned whither Marie Delhasse, come in pursuance of my directions, stood with a hand pointed in questioning at the duke, and the pistol that I had given her fallen from her fingers on the sand. And she swayed to and fro, till I set my arm round her and steadied her. "Have you killed him?" she asked in a frightened whisper. "I did not so much as fire at him," I answered. "We were attacked by thieves." "By thieves?" "The inn-keeper and another. They thought that he carried the necklace, and tracked us here." "And did they take it?" "It was not on him," I answered, looking into her eyes. She raised them to mine and said simply: "I have it not;" and with that, asking no more, she drew near to the duke, and sat down by him on the sand, and lifted his head on to her lap, and wiped his brow with her handkerchief, saying in a low voice, "Is he dead?" Now, whether it be, as some say, that the voice a man loves will rouse him when none else will, or that the duke's swoon had merely come to its natural end, I know not; but, as she spoke, he, who had slept through Pierre's rough handling, opened his eyes, and, seeing where he was, tried to raise his hand, groping after hers: and he spoke, with difficulty indeed, yet plainly enough, saying: "The rascals thought I had the necklace. They did not know how kind you had been, my darling." I started where I stood. Marie grew red and then white, and looked down at him no longer with pity, but with scorn and anger on her face. "I have it not," she said again. "For all heaven, I would not touch it!" And she looked up to me as she said it, praying me with her eyes to believe. But her words roused and stung the duke to an effort and an activity that I thought impossible to him; for he rolled himself from her lap, and, raising himself on his hand, with half his body lifted from the ground, said in a loud voice: "You have it not? You haven't the necklace? Why, your message told me that you would never part from it again?" "I sent no message," she answered in a hard voice, devoid of pity for him; how should she pity him? "I sent no message, save that I would sooner die than see you again." Amazement spread over his face even in the hour of his agony.