"Are you _quite_ a fool?" she whispered, her voice almost a hiss, her hot breath on my cheek. "Have you no sense left, that you trust that man?" For a moment I failed to understand her. "What man?" I said. "Oh, Van Tree!" "Ay, Van Tree! Who else? Will you go straight into the trap he has laid for you?" She moistened her lips with her tongue, as though they were parched. "You are all mad! Mad, I think! Don't you see," she continued, stooping over me again and whispering hurriedly, her wild eyes close to mine, "that he is jealous of you?" "He was," I said uneasily. "That is all right now." "He was? He is!" she retorted. "He went away wild with you. He comes back smiling and holding out his hand. Do you trust him? Don't you see--don't you see," she cried, rocking me to and fro with her hand in her excitement, "that he is fooling you? He is leading us all into a trap that has been laid carefully enough. What is this tale of an English envoy on his way to Germany? Rubbish! Rubbish, I tell you." "But Clarence----" "Bah! It was all your fancy!" she cried fiercely, her eyes for the moment flitting to the door, then returning to my face. "How should he find us here? Or what has Clarence to do with an English envoy?" "I do not know," I said. She had not in the least persuaded me. In a rare moment I had seen into Van Tree's soul and trusted him implicitly. "Please take care," I added, wincing under her hand. "You hurt me!" She sprang back with a sudden change of countenance as if I had struck her, and for a moment cowered away from me, her former passion still apparent fighting for the mastery in her face. I set down her condition to terror at the plight we were all in, or to vexation that no one would take her view. The next moment I went farther. I thought her mad, when she turned abruptly from me and, flying to the door by which Van Tree had entered, began with trembling fingers to release the pin which confined the bar. "Stop! stop! you will ruin all!" I cried in horror. "They can see that door from the river, and if they see the light, they will know we are up and have taken the alarm; and they may make a dash to secure us. Stop, Anne! Stop!" I cried. But the girl was deaf. She tugged desperately at the pin, and had already loosened the bar when I caught her by the arms, and, pushing her away, set my back against the door. "Don't be foolish!" I said gently. "You have lost your head. You must let us men settle these things, Anne." She was indeed beside herself, for she faced me during a second or two as though she would spring upon me and tear me from the door. Her hands worked, her eyes gleamed, her strong white teeth showed themselves. I shuddered. I had never pictured her looking like that. Then, as steps sounded on the stairs and cheerful voices--cheerful they seemed to me as they broke in on that strange scene--drew nearer, she turned, and walking deliberately to a seat, fell to weeping hysterically.