With equal power the voice of moral obligation and that of pure desire made their plea. Now the duty of a wife pointed the way, now her love for Mario. Insistently the prospect of Tarsis dead mingled itself with a vision of her fetters struck off--her heart no longer bond, but free to obey the law it had broken. She had prayed that Mario’s life might be spared, and now she was tempted to leave her husband to his destiny, to go on to the love for which her soul hungered, to claim the happiness that seemed ordained of events. In the minute that she waited, a captive of warring emotions, shop-keepers up and down the street were putting shutters to their windows and shouting to her, “To your home, signora; to your home!” The air grew thick with the roar of the mob. A few seconds and it would be too late to save the life that meant death to her happiness. “Down with Tarsis!” The cry was so near as to rise distinct out of the fearful dissonance. And in an impulse that came as the words fell upon her ears she gave her horse a stroke of the whip and galloped hard for the palace gates. In the court she sprang from the saddle, ran past the garage and stables, reached the main portico, and hurried up the grand staircase and through the gloom of the corridors, calling the name of her husband--“Antonio! Antonio!” There was no answer save the chuckling echo of the great halls. She gained the Atlantean chamber, and, thinking of the library where he spent so much of his time, made for the door of it, at the farther-most angle of the great room. Knocking stoutly, she called out again: “It is I, Hera!” On the other side there was the sound of movement, the striking of a match; then the door was opened, and she beheld Tarsis, a lighted candle in his trembling hand. In that moment all the bitterness he had planted in her soul gave way before a flood of pity. “I knew your voice,” he said, weakly. “Why have you come back?” “To tell you to fly! The mob will be here!” He seemed to be in a stupor of fear. “I thought I heard them,” he said, huskily. “Are they coming to the palace?” “Yes; they have broken through the military lines. Signor Ulrich told me.” “Signor Ulrich! You saw him?” “Yes; he has fled. He said that he heard them crying out against you!” “What did they say at the Questura? Am I not to have my guard of carbineers?” “There is no time for a guard,” she answered, taking hold of his sleeve. “I tell you that the mob is approaching up Via Cappuccini. Come! We can go out by the Corso gate.” “Yes; let us go,” he said, and started across the vast apartment, Hera at his side, while the candle in his shaking hand made their shadows do a strange fandango. In their ears was the roar of human fury, sifted by the encompassing walls into a haunting murmur. They passed the picture of Heribert and his warriors and were at the point of setting foot in the corridor, when they halted and looked each other in the face.