Marpasse crossed the outer room, peeped in, held up a hand to Aymery, and turned and called Denise. There was an iron catch on the door that hooked into a staple, so that the door could be fastened on the outer side. Moreover the door opened outwards into the larger room, and Marpasse stood with her hand on the catch. “She is coming, Father,” she said, keeping her eyes upon Denise. The grey figure brushed past Marpasse, and crossed the threshold in all innocence. No sooner was Denise within, than Marpasse clapped to the door, fastened it, and ran like a mad woman out of the house. In the wood-shed at the end of the rough garden she found Grimbald sitting patiently on the chopping block behind a screen of faggots. “I have shut her in with him,” she said; “now love must win—or never.” CHAPTER XLIV The morning sunlight poured through the window and struck upon Denise as she stood leaning against the door that Marpasse had closed on her. The first impulse had been one of anger, the anger of one caught in an ambuscade. For it was not Grimbald that she saw, but Aymery, propped against a pillow, with a face like wax, his eyes shining at her, eyes full of that truth which she had sought to shun. “Denise!” He held out his hands to her, rising in the bed so that the sunlight fell upon his head and shoulders. And Denise, leaning against the door, found her anger sinking into a kind of stupor. Her face was as white as Aymery’s, and she shrank like a bird when the hand of the fowler comes into the trap. Aymery’s eager face was still luminous, as though the soul shone through the flesh. Denise’s hood was drawn, yet beneath it he caught the gleam of her splendid hair. She did not move or utter a word, but stood there helplessly, hearing her own heart beating like a thing that struggles to be free. There was a sudden sense of a shadow stealing across the room. The man’s face had clouded. A troubled, questioning look came into the eyes, the look of a dog trying to understand. His hands sank slowly to the bed, and were no longer stretched out to her, but lay open, palms upward, the hands of a man waiting for alms from heaven. For the moment Denise saw nothing but those hands. The rush of blind anger against Marpasse went out before a spasm of compassion. The silence of the room seemed the silence of a great church where the Holy Blood is uplifted. Then a mystery of infinite, dim things swept over her like a cloud of incense. She shivered, and held her breath. “Denise.” She struggled to find words. “I thought that it was Grimbald here. Marpasse deceived me.” How poor and miserly the words seemed, and the sense of their ineffectual coldness drove her to glance at Aymery’s face. He was lying back in the shadow, his eyes watching her with that same puzzled, questioning, and wistful look. She saw them fill suddenly with understanding, and the generous gleam that followed, humbled her heart.