He got no farther. Ashamed of his own weakness, he was too proud to let her see that she made him suffer. For the moment, he only bent the knee and kissed the hem of her diaphanous gown. He looked so handsome then, despite his bedraggled, woebegone appearance, so young, so ardent, that Theresia's egotistical heart was touched, as it had always been when the incense of his perfect love rose to her sophisticated nostrils. She put out her hand and brushed with a gentle, almost maternal, gesture the matted brown hair from his brow. "Dear Bertrand," she murmured vaguely. "What a foolish boy to think that I do not care!" Already he had been brought back to his senses. The imminence of her danger lent him the courage which he had been lacking, and unhesitatingly now he jumped to his feet and turned to go. But she, quick in the transition of her moods, had already seized him by the arm. "No, no!" she murmured in a hoarse whisper. "Don't go just yet . . . not before Pepita has seen if the stairs are clear." Her small hand held him as in a vice, whilst Pepita, obedient and silent, was shuffling across the vestibule in order to execute her mistress's commands. But, even so, Bertrand struggled to get away. An epitome of their whole life, this struggle between them!--he trying to free himself from those insidious bonds that held him one moment and loosed him the next; that numbed him to all that he was wont to hold sacred and dear--his love for Régine, his loyalty, his honour. An epitome of her character and his: he, weak and yielding, ever a ready martyr, thirsting for self-immolation; and she, just a bundle of feminine caprice, swayed by sentiment one moment and by considerations of ambition or of personal safety the next. "You must wait, Bertrand," she urged insistently. "Citizen Tallien may be on the stairs--he or--or the other. If they saw you! . . . My God!" "They would conclude that you had turned me out of doors," he riposted simply. "Which would, in effect, be the truth. I entreat you to let me go!" he added earnestly. "'Twere better they met me on the stairs than here." The old woman's footsteps were heard hurrying back. Bertrand struggled to free himself--did in truth succeed; and Theresia smothered a desperate cry of warning as he strode rapidly through the door and across the vestibule, only to be met here by Pepita, who pushed him with all her might incontinently back. Theresia held her tiny handkerchief to her mouth to deaden the scream that forced itself to her lips. She had followed Bertrand out of the salon, and now stood in the doorway, a living statue of fear. "Citizen Tallien," Pepita had murmured hurriedly. "He is on the landing. Come this way." She dragged Bertrand by the arm, not waiting for orders from her mistress this time, along a narrow dark passage, which at its extreme end gave access to a tiny kitchen. Into this she pushed him and locked the door upon him.