I was still flurried and shaken--I say it with shame--by Gargouf's fate; and when she did not answer at once, I looked round impatiently. To my astonishment, she was gone. In the darkness, it was not easy to see any one at a distance of a dozen feet, and the reek of the smoke was spreading. Still, she had been at my elbow a moment before, she could not be far off. I took a step this way and that, and looked again anxiously; and then I found her. She was kneeling against a chimney, her face buried in her hands. Her hair covered her shoulders, and partly hid her white robe. I thought the time ill-chosen, and I touched her angrily. "Mademoiselle!" I said. "There is not a moment to be lost! Come! they have opened the door!" She looked up at me, and the still pallor of her face sobered me. "I am not coming," she said, in a low voice. "Farewell, Monsieur!" "You are not coming?" I cried. "No, Monsieur; save yourself," she answered firmly and quietly. And she looked up at me with her hands still clasped before her, as if she were fain to return to her prayers, and waited only for me to go. I gasped. "But, Mademoiselle!" I cried, staring at the white-robed figure, that in the gloom--a gloom riven now and again by hot flashes, as some burning spark soared upwards--seemed scarcely earthly--"But, Mademoiselle, you do not understand. This is no child's play. To stay here is death! death! The house is burning under us. Presently the roof, on which we stand, will fall in, and then----" "Better that," she answered, raising her head with heaven knows what of womanly dignity, caught in this supreme moment by her, a child--"Better that, than that I should fall into their hands. I am a St. Alais, and I can die," she continued firmly. "But I must not fall into their hands. Do you, Monsieur, save yourself. Go now, and I will pray for you." "And I for you, Mademoiselle," I answered, with a full heart. "If you stay, I stay." She looked at me a moment, her face troubled. Then she rose slowly to her feet. The servants had disappeared, the trap-door lay open; no one had yet come up. We had the roof to ourselves. I saw her shudder as she looked round; and in a second I had her in my arms--she was no heavier than a child--and was half-way across the roof. She uttered a faint cry of remonstrance, of reproach, and for an instant struggled with me. But I only held her the tighter, and ran on. From the trap-door a ladder led downwards; somehow, still holding her with one hand, I stumbled down it, until I reached the foot, and found myself in a passage, which was all dark. One way, however, a light shone at the end of it.