A wave of blood seemed to sweep through her brain, making her momentarily giddy. She put out a hand to a chair-back, and stood supporting herself. It had come--but only what she had expected, looked for. She was desperately pledged to the issue, and there was no escape from it at this last. It was even a relief to her to be called from the horrible suspense of inaction. Suddenly the memory of that crimson streak she had torn upon the insolent face returned to her. A red light came to her eyes; the blood-ensign of “women who love brave men,” in Bissy’s creed. She was not going to falter now, or be untrue to her ideal of manliness. Besides, the end justified the means. Taking herself forcibly in hand, she went down the stairs to the door into the corridor. This was a deserted part of the building, and now even unwontedly quiet by reason of the Infanta’s desire for repose. Thus, and for such purpose, to take advantage of its abandonment might have seemed a double treachery to some people. Such moral niceties were beyond Fanchette’s appreciation. She descended softly and found a man at the door. He was a strong truculent-looking fellow, unknown to her--swagger in his attitude, an inhuman animalism in his small sunken eyes and bushy-bearded face, on which a thick smear of lip stood prominent. She had had no personal intercourse with his kind; but the hall-mark of the _assassino-prezzolato_ was stamped on his every feature. He was well enough dressed to pass for a _fanfaron_; but she knew, without seeing them, what there was under his cloak to point the moral of his trade. Face to face with the loathly thing she had helped to call into being, a revulsion against her own bestial weapons seized her. This brute to hold a fine destiny in his hands! Her narrow lips went up, as in the presence of something physically offensive. She had no fear for herself--not an atom. The man swept off his hat with a leer, that in its suggestion of hidden confidences was fulsome. He produced and handed to her a little folded tuck of paper. “Un’ lettera amorosa, signora,” he said, in rather guttural Italian, his nose wrinkling. “The sender awaits a reply.” She plucked the thing apart, and, barely glancing at its message, crumpled it in her hand, and answered: “Tell him I will come.” He grinned, saluted her again, and swaggered off. She could have called upon heaven then and there to strike him dead. That her nature must be thus subdued to what it worked in, not like the “dyer’s” but like the butcher’s hand--be claimed to an affinity with this abomination! It was horrible. Yet so her own compliance had decreed it. Henceforth and for all time he was her loathed confederate, and by reason of that understanding her master. Her hands might be purely white and her little feet as playful as a lamb’s: for all that lay hidden between she was the foul bondslave of blood.