when it would move.  This was what was going to happen next.  It would move very gently.  My heart began to thump.  But I was prepared to keep myself as still as death and I hoped Dona Rita would have sense enough to do the same.  I stole another glance at her face and at that moment I heard the word:  “Beloved!” form itself in the still air of the room, weak, distinct, piteous, like the last request of the dying.

With great presence of mind I whispered into Dona Rita’s ear:  “Perfect silence!” and was overjoyed to discover that she had heard me, understood me; that she even had command over her rigid lips.  She answered me in a breath (our cheeks were nearly touching):  “Take me out of this house.”

I glanced at all her clothing scattered about the room and hissed forcibly the warning “Perfect immobility”; noticing with relief that she didn’t offer to move, though animation was returning to her and her lips had remained parted in an awful, unintended effect of a smile.  And I don’t know whether I was pleased when she, who was not to be touched, gripped my wrist suddenly.  It had the air of being done on purpose because almost instantly another:  “Beloved!” louder, more agonized if possible, got into the room and, yes, went home to my heart.  It was followed without any transition, preparation, or warning, by a positively bellowed:  “Speak, perjured beast!” which I felt pass in a thrill right through Dona Rita like an electric shock, leaving her as motionless as before.

Till he shook the door handle, which he did immediately afterwards, I wasn’t certain through which door he had spoken.  The two doors (in different walls) were rather near each other.  It was as I expected.  He was in the fencing-room, thoroughly aroused, his senses on the alert to catch the slightest sound.  A situation not to be trifled with.  Leaving the room was for us out of the question.  It was quite possible for him to dash round into the hall before we could get clear of the front door.  As to making a bolt of it upstairs there was the same objection; and to allow ourselves to be chased all over the empty house by this maniac would have been mere folly.  There was no advantage in locking ourselves up anywhere upstairs where the original doors and locks were much lighter.  No, true safety was in absolute stillness and silence, so that even his rage should be brought to doubt at last and die expended, or choke him before it died; I didn’t care which.

For me to go out and meet him would have been stupid.  Now I was certain that he was armed.  I had remembered the wall in the fencing-room decorated with trophies of cold steel in all the civilized and savage forms; sheaves of assegais, in the guise of columns and grouped between them stars and suns of choppers, swords, knives; from Italy, from Damascus, from Abyssinia, from the ends of the world.  Ortega had only to make his barbarous choice.  I suppose he had got up on the bench, and fumbling about amongst them must have brought one down, which, falling, had produced that rattling noise.  But in any case to go to meet him would have been folly, because, after all, I might have been overpowered (even with bare hands) and then Dona Rita would have been left utterly defenceless.