The looming of a wall checked him.  Here stood her house; she had the briefest possible start of him, and he had run headlong the whole way; by all the certainty of instinct, he knew that he had chosen the right path:  why, then, had he not overtaken her?  If she met that band which he had just broken through—­He wavered in the darkness, and was turning wildly to race back, when a sudden light sprang up before him in her window.  He plunged forward, in at the gate, across a plot of turf, stumbled through the Goddess of Mercy bamboo that hedged the door, and went falling up the dark stairs, crying aloud,—­for the first time in his life,—­“Bertha!  Bertha!”

Empty rooms rang with the name, but no one answered.  At last, however, reaching the upper level, he saw by lamplight, through the open door, two figures struggling.  Just before he entered, she tore herself free and went unsteadily across the room.  Chantel, white and abject, turned as in panic.

“Oh!” Plainly he had not expected to see another face as white as his own.  Breathless and trembling, he spoke in a strangely little voice; but his staring eyes lighted with a sudden and desperate resolution.  “Help me with her,” he begged.  “She won’t listen.  The woman’s out of her wits.”

He caught Rudolph by the arm; and standing for a moment like close friends, the two panting rivals watched her in stupefaction.  She ransacked a great cedar chest, a table, shelves, boxes, and strewed the contents on the floor,—­silk scarfs, shining Benares brass, Chinese silver, vivid sarongs from the Preanger regency, Kyoto cloisonne, a wild heap of plunder from the bazaars of all the nations where Gilly’s meagre earnings had been squandered.  A Cingalese box dropped and burst open, scattering bright stones, false or precious, broadcast.  She trampled them in her blind and furious search.

“Come,” said Chantel, and snatched at her.  “Leave those.  Come to the boat.  Every minute—­”

She pushed him aside like a thing without weight or meaning, stooped again among the gay rubbish, caught up a necklace, flung it down for the sake of a brooch, then dropped everything and turned with blank, dilated eyes, and the face of a child lost in a crowd.

“Rudolph,” she whimpered, “help me.  What shall I do?”

Without waiting for answer, she bent once more to sort and discard her pitiful treasures, to pause vaguely, consider, and wring her hands.  Rudolph, in his turn, caught her by the arm, but fared no better.

“We must humor her,” whispered Chantel, and, kneeling like a peddler among the bazaar-stuffs, spread on the floor a Java sarong, blue and brown, painted with men and buffaloes.  On this he began to heap things pell-mell.

The woman surrendered, and all at once flung her arms about Rudolph, hiding her face, and clinging to him as if with the last of her strength.

“Come, he’ll bring them,” she sobbed.  “Let’s go—­to the boat.  He must find his own way.  Take me.”  Hurry and fright choked her.  “Take me—­leave him, if he won’t come—­I scolded him—­then the noises came, and we ran—­”