As soon as he said that I understood it was the refugee from Ste. Pelagie that he wanted.

“Certainly,” I answered.  “Don’t make a disturbance.”

“You will take my arm and come with me, Monsieur Veeleeum.”

“I will do nothing of the kind until my errand is finished,” I answered desperately.

De Chaumont looked sharply at the man, but his own salvation required him to lay hold on the marquis.  As he did so, Eagle’s face and my face encountered in a panel of mirror, two flashes of pallor; and I took my last look.

“You will come with me now,” said the gendarme at my ear.

She saw him, and understood his errand.

There was no chance.  De Chaumont wheeled ready to introduce me to the marquis.  I was not permitted to speak to him.  But Eagle took my right arm and moved down the corridor with me.

Decently and at once the disguised gendarme fell behind where he could watch every muscle without alarming Madame de Ferrier.  She appeared not to see him.  I have no doubt he praised himself for his delicacy and her unconsciousness of my arrest.

“You must not think you can run away from me,” she said.

“I was coming back,” I answered, making talk.

My captor’s person heaved behind me, signifying that he silently laughed.  He kept within touch.

“Do you know the Tuileries well?” inquired Eagle.

“No.  I have never been in the palace before.”

“Nor I, in the state apartments.”

We turned from the corridor into a suite in these upper rooms, the gendarme humoring Madame de Ferrier, and making himself one in the crowd around us.  De Chaumont and the Marquis de Ferrier gave chase.  I saw them following, as well as they could.

“This used to be the queen’s dressing-room,” said Eagle.  We entered the last one in the suite.

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“This is the room you told me you would like to examine?”

“The very one.  I don’t believe the Empire has made any changes in it.  These painted figures look just as Sophie described them.”

Eagle traced lightly with her finger one of the shepherdesses dancing on the panel; and crossed to the opposite side of the room.  People who passed the door found nothing to interest them, and turned away, but the gendarme stayed beside us.  Eagle glanced at him as if resenting his intrusion, and asked me to bring her a candle and hold it near a mark on the tracery.  The gendarme himself, apologetic but firm, stepped to the sconce and took the candle.  I do not know how the thing was done, or why the old spring and long unused hinges did not stick, but his back was toward us—­she pushed me against the panel and it let me in.

And I held her and drew her after me, and the thing closed.  The wall had swallowed us.

We stood on firm footing as if suspended in eternity.  No sound from the swarming palace, not even possible noise made by the gendarme, reached us.  It was like being earless, until she spoke in the hollow.