Will you requite Madame, who has gained it for us
at her own risk--"
"It is Monsieur I would requite," Tignonville muttered grimly.
"By using violence to her?" the minister retorted passionately. He and
Tuez were still gripping one another. "I tell you, to go on is to risk
what we have got! And I for one--"
"Am chicken-hearted!" the young man sneered. "Madame--" He seemed to
choke on the word. "Will you swear that he is not here?"
"I swear that if you do not go I will raise the alarm!" she hissed--all
their words were sunk to that stealthy note. "Go! if you have not stayed
too long already. Go! Or see!" And she pointed to the trapdoor, from
which the face and arms of a sixth man had that moment risen--the face
dark with perturbation, so that her woman's wit told her at once that
something was amiss. "See what has come of your delay already!"
"The water is rising," the man muttered earnestly. "In God's name come,
whether you have done it or not, or we cannot pass out again. It is
within a foot of the crown of the culvert now, and it is rising."
"Curse on the water!" Tuez-les-Moines answered in a frenzied whisper.
"And on this Jezebel. Let us kill her and him! What matter afterwards?"
And he tried to shake off La Tribe's grasp.
But the minister held him desperately.
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