They were her father’s own words, but at sound of them she shrank and shivered, in sheer horror at the coolness with which they were uttered.  He might have been asking her to stroll with him in the leafy quiet of some English lane.

Could it be, she asked herself incredulously, could it be that her father had ever sanctioned and approved so ghastly a risk for her?  She put her hand to her temples.  Her brain was reeling.  How could she do this thing?  How could she have permitted it to be even suggested to her?  And then, swift through her tortured mind flashed his words:  “There will be an end.  I have had to face it to-night.”  Was it this that he had meant?  Was it for this that he had been preparing her?

With a muffled exclamation she rose, trembling in every limb.  “I can’t!” she cried piteously, “oh, I can’t!  Please go away!”

It might have been the frightened prayer of a child, so beseeching was it, so full of weakness.  But Nick Ratcliffe heard it unmoved.  He waited a few seconds till she came to a stand by the table, her back towards him.  Then with a sudden quiet movement he rose and followed her.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.  “But you can’t afford to shirk things at this stage.  I am offering you deliverance, though you don’t realise it.”

He spoke with force, and if his aim had been to rouse her to a more practical activity, he gained his end.  She turned upon him in swift and desperate indignation.  Her voice rang almost harsh.

“How can you call it deliverance?  It is at best a choice of two horrible evils.  You know perfectly well that we could never get through.  You must be mad to suggest such a thing.  We should be made prisoners and massacred under the very guns of the fort.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said again, and his eyelids quivered a little as if under the pressure of some controlled emotion.  “We shall not be made prisoners.  I know what I am saying.  It is deliverance that I am offering you.  Of course you can refuse, and I shall still do my utmost to save you.  But the chances are not equal.  I hope you will not refuse.”

The moderation of this speech calmed her somewhat.  In her first wild panic she had almost imagined that he could take her against her will.  She saw that she had been unreasonable, but she was too shaken to tell him so.  Moreover, there was still that about him, notwithstanding his words, that made her afraid to yield a single inch of ground lest by some hidden means he should sweep her altogether from her precarious foothold.  Even in the silence, she felt that he was doing battle with her, and she did not dare to face him.

With a childish gesture of abandonment, she dropped into a chair and laid her head upon her arms.

“Oh, please go away!” she besought him weakly.  “I am so tired—­so tired.”

But Ratcliffe did not move.  He stood looking down at her, at the black hair that clustered about her neck, at the bowed, despairing figure, the piteous, clenched hands.