Not roughly, but with a force I could not combat, Monsieur de Commines caught me by the arm, drawing me in the direction of the door, and the last I knew of Louis of Valois was the skeleton head turned towards me on the pillows, the yellow sunken face wrinkled into a malevolent, smirking laugh, and a piping voice that said: "Are you there, Father Francis? Mother of Mercy! pray for me, for I am very weak." Not even when we were beyond the door, not till we were midway down the gallery, and so in comparative privacy between two sets of guards, did he loosen his hold. At first I thought he was angry, so urgent was he, so insistent. But no, his eyes were full of pity, and his face, white and strained, was the face of a man in sore trouble rather than wrath. "You have failed, Mademoiselle," said he, with a kind of fatherly tenderness that sat strangely on one whose hair was still unsilvered. "That was inevitable from the first. But though you have failed, it will be a comfort hereafter that you made the trial." "But there is still hope, Monseigneur, surely there is still hope?" "Yes," he assented with a sudden cheerfulness, "of course you are right, and for to-day hope is our best medicine." "What did the King mean at the last?" I asked as as we walked slowly onward. "He said I was to think hard. But, Monseigneur, I cannot think. My brain is dazed, is in a whirl. He spoke of a man for a child, but my head swims, and I cannot understand." "Do not try to understand," he answered very gently. I never thought so stern a man had so much of a woman's tenderness in him. "Think only that yea or nay you are to see Monsieur de Helville again. Have you strength for another ride to Poictiers?" "To Poictiers to see Gaspard? Why, yes, Monseigneur. Poictiers to see Gaspard! That is nothing." "Then my advice is, rest. Nurse your strength, Mademoiselle; who knows when it may be needed, or for what crisis." And I did rest, partly because I was worn threadbare, and partly through a draught Coctier gave me. So Friday drifted into the last day of the week end, and on the morrow Gaspard was to die at dawn. CHAPTER XXXIII "IT IS THE FINGER OF GOD!" How the hours of that day passed I cannot tell. They crawled, that was when I sat listening for the footfall of the King's messenger who never came; they flew, that was when I thought of Poictiers' market-place, and what the dawn brought with it. But whether they crept or flew, I was like one groping a way through a maze and forever being turned back.