The electric light suddenly shone out from a globe in the angle of the wall which served two cells.  She awoke; Bertie awoke.  He was still happy in some opiate dream and his eyes in his haggard face looked at her with a sleepy, happy affection.  Loth to awaken him to reality she kissed him on the cheek and withdrew from the cell—­for the Directeur, out of delicacy, had withdrawn and left the door ajar.  She rejoined him in the corridor and he led her to her own quarters for the night; where, worn out with sorrow and fatigue, she undressed and slept dreamlessly.

But the hour of the awakening on that wintry Sunday morning!  It was snowing intermittently and the sky, seen from the high window, was lead-coloured.  Owing to the scarcity of fuel, the cell was unwarmed.  She dressed hurriedly, feeling still untidy and dishevelled when she had finished.  Her breakfast, and with it a little packet of white powder from the prison doctor, to be taken with the breakfast.  She swallowed it.  If it were poison sent by the German Government, what matter?  But it was in reality some drug which took the edge off sorrow.

Bertie had evidently been given a similar dose.  They spent the morning and the afternoon of that Sunday together, almost happily.  With intervals of dreamy silence, they talked of old times.  Neither would have been surprised had the cell walls dissolved as in a transformation scene and they had been able to step out into the Fountain Court of the Temple or into the cheerful traffic of Chancery Lane.

When however she returned to his cell after her evening meal, his mood had changed; the effect of the drug had passed.  He had moods of despair and wild crying.  No response had come, no answer to Vivie’s appeal, no result from Monsieur Walcker’s activities.  Bertie reproached himself for cowardice ... then the doctor came in.  “An injection in the arm?  So!  He will sleep now till morning.  Esperons toujours!  Et vous, ma pauvre Mademoiselle.  Vous etes excedee.  Permettez que je vous fasse la meme piqure?”

But she thanked him and said she wanted all her wits about her, though she promised “se maitriser”—­to keep calm.

What a night!  Her ears had a sense of hearing that was preternaturally acute.  The most distant step in the corridors was audible.  Was it a reprieve?  One such sound multiplied itself into the footsteps of two men walking, coming ever nearer—­nearer—­nearer till they stopped outside her cell door.  With a clank it was opened.  She sprang up.  Fortunately she had not undressed.  “You’ve brought a reprieve?” she gasped.  But the Directeur and Monsieur Walcker only stood with downcast faces.  “It will soon be morning,” the Directeur said.  “There is no hope of a reprieve.  He is to be executed at seven at the Tir National.  All we have secured for you is permission to accompany him to the end.  But if you think that too painful, too great a strain, I would suggest that you—­”