had the crisis come quickly he might have met it.  But he had to wait, and to wait with that howling of wild beasts in his ears; and for this he was not prepared.  A woman might be content to die after this fashion; but a man?  His colour went and came, his eyes began to rove hither and thither.  Was it even now too late to escape?  Too late to avoid the consequences of the girl’s silly persistence?  Too late to—?  Her eyes were closed, she hung half lifeless on his arm.  She would not know, she need not know until afterwards.  And afterwards she would thank him!  Afterwards—­meantime the window was open, the street was empty, and still the crowd hung back and did not come.

He remembered that two doors away was a narrow passage, which leaving the Rue St. Honore turned at right angles under a beetling archway, to emerge in the Rue du Roule.  If he could gain that passage unseen by the mob!  He would gain it.  With a swift movement, his mind made up, he took a step forward.  He tightened his grasp of the girl’s waist, and, seizing with his left hand the end of the bar which the assailants had torn from its setting in the window jamb, he turned to lower himself.  One long step would land him in the street.

At that moment she awoke from the stupor of exaltation.  She opened her eyes with a startled movement; and her eyes met his.

He was in the act of stepping backwards and downwards, dragging her after him.  But it was not this betrayed him.  It was his face, which in an instant told her all, and that he sought not death, but life!  She struggled upright and strove to free herself.  But he had the purchase of the bar, and by this time he was furious as well as determined.  Whether she would or no, he would save her, he would drag her out.  Then, as consciousness fully returned, she, too, took fire.

“No!” she cried, “I will not!” and she struggled more violently.

“You shall!” he retorted between his teeth.  “You shall not perish here.”

But she had her hands free, and as he spoke she thrust him from her passionately, desperately, with all her strength.  He had his one foot in the air at the moment, and in a flash it was done.  With a cry of rage he lost his balance, and, still holding the bar, reeled backwards through the window; while Mademoiselle, panting and half fainting, recoiled—­recoiled into the arms of Hannibal de Tavannes, who, unseen by either, had entered the room a long minute before.  From the threshold, and with a smile, all his own, he had watched the contest and the result.

CHAPTER VIII.  TWO HENS AND AN EGG.

M. de Tignonville was shaken by the fall, and in the usual course of things he would have lain where he was, and groaned.  But when a man has once turned his back on death he is apt to fancy it at his shoulder.  He has small stomach for surprises, and is in haste to set as great a distance as possible between the ugly thing and himself.  So it was with the Huguenot.  Shot suddenly into the full publicity of the street, he knew that at any instant danger might take him by the nape; and he was on his legs and glancing up and down before the clatter of his fall had travelled the length of three houses.