De Pyrmont looked at Wilfrid’s face.

‘Have I hit you anywhere accidentally?’ he asked, for the face had grown dead-white.

‘Be my friend, for heaven’s sake!’ was the choking answer.  ’Save her!  Get her away !  She is an old acquaintance of mine—­of mine, in England.  Do; or I shall have to break my sword.’

‘You know her? and you don’t go over to her?’ said De Pyrmont.

‘I—­yes, she knows me.’

‘Then, why not present yourself?’

’Get her away.  Talk Weisspriess down.  He is for seizing her at all hazards.  It ’s madness to provoke a conflict.  Just listen to the house!  I may be broken, but save her I will.  De Pyrmont, on my honour, I will stand by you for ever if you will help me to get her away.’

‘To suggest my need in the hour of your own is not a bad notion,’ said the cool Frenchman.  ‘What plan have you?’

Wilfrid struck his forehead miserably.

‘Stop Lieutenant Zettlisch.  Don’t let him go up to her.  Don’t—­’

De Pyrmont beheld in astonishment that a speechlessness such as affects condemned wretches in the supreme last minutes of existence had come upon the Englishman.

‘I’m afraid yours is a bad case,’ he said; ’and the worst of it is, it’s just the case women have no compassion for.  Here comes a parlementaire from the opposite camp.  Let’s hear him.’

It was Luciano Romara.  He stood before them to request that the curtain should be raised.  The officers debated together, and deemed it prudent to yield consent.

Luciano stipulated further that the soldiers were to be withdrawn.

‘On one wing, or on both wings?’ said Captain Weisspriess, twinkling eyes oblique.

‘Out of the house,’ said Luciano.

The officers laughed.

‘You must confess,’ said De Pyrmont, affably, ’that though the drum does issue command to the horse, it scarcely thinks of doing so after a rent in the skin has shown its emptiness.  Can you suppose that we are likely to run when we see you empty-handed?  These things are matters of calculation.’

‘It is for you to calculate correctly,’ said Luciano.

As he spoke, a first surge of the exasperated house broke upon the stage and smote the curtain, which burst into white zigzags, as it were a breast stricken with panic.

Giacinta came running in to her mistress, and cloaked and hooded her hurriedly.

Enamoured; impassioned, Ammiani murmured in Vittoria’s ear:  ‘My own soul!’

She replied:  ‘My lover!’

So their first love-speech was interchanged with Italian simplicity, and made a divine circle about them in the storm.

Luciano returned to his party to inform them that they held the key of the emergency.

‘Stick fast,’ he said.  ’None of you move.  Whoever takes the first step takes the false step; I see that.’

‘We have no arms, Luciano.’