She looked at me with a strange gravity in her face; and answered me so that I never forgot her answer. "Monsieur," she said, "was I afraid on the roof of the house at St. Alais? And I have more to guard now. Have no fear. There is a roof here, too, and I walk on it; nor shall my husband ever have cause to blush for me." "But I was there," I said quickly. Heaven knows why; it was a strange thing to say. Yet she did not find it so. "Yes," she said--and smiled; and with the smile, her face burned again and her eyes grew soft, and all her dignity fled in a moment, and she looked at me, drooping. And in an instant she was in my arms. But only for a few seconds. Then she tore herself away almost in anger. "Oh, go, go!" she cried. "If you love me, go, Monsieur." "Swear," I said, "to put a handkerchief in your window if you want help!" "In my window?" "I can see it from Father Benôit's." A gleam of joy lit up her face. "I will," she said. "Oh, God be thanked that you are so near! I will. But I have Françoise, too, and she is true to me. As long as I have her----" She stopped with her lips apart, and the blood gone suddenly from her cheeks; and we looked at one another. Alas, I had stayed too long! There was a noise of feet coming along the passage, and a hubbub of voices outside, and the clatter of a door hastily closed. I think for a moment we scarcely breathed; and even after that it was her woman who was the first to move. She sprang to the door and softly locked it. "It is vain!" Denise said in a harsh whisper; she leaned against the table, her face as white as snow. "They will fetch my mother, and they will kill you." "There is no other door?" I muttered, staring round with hunted eyes, and feeling for the first time the full danger of the course I had taken. She shook her head. "What is that?" I cried, pointing to the farther end of the chamber, where a bed stood in the alcove. "A closet," the woman answered, almost with a sob. "Yes, yes, Monsieur, they may not search. Quick, and I can lock it." In such a case man acts on instinct. I heard the latch of the door tried, and then some one knocked peremptorily; and so long I hesitated. But a second knock followed on the first, and a voice I knew cried imperatively: "Open, open, Françoise!" and I moved towards the closet. The girl, distracted by the repeated summons and her terror, hung a moment between me and the door of the room; but in the end had to go to the latter, so that I drew the closet door upon myself.