A faint cry came stealing through the silence of the place, like the wail of a bird that passes on the night wind and is gone.

TiphaÏne heard it and stood listening, her eyes changing their intensity of purpose for a shadowy and vague unrest. Bertrand was still standing by the torch he had thrust into the iron bracket clamped to the wall. The flare flung darkness and light alternate upon his face.

TiphaÏne started up from the prie-dieu, and, opening the chapel door, called:

“Arletta, Arletta!”

No sounds came to them save the crackling and hissing of the wood upon the fire. TiphaÏne passed in, looking into the dark corners of the solar for a crouching figure or the white glimmer of a human face. The room was empty; Arletta had disappeared.

TiphaÏne stood for a moment like one taken with a sudden spasm of the heart. The broken knife-blade shone symbolically at her feet.

“Bertrand!”

The cry came sharply from her, as though inspired by fear.

“Bertrand!”

He followed her and looked round the room, not grasping the prophetic instinct of her dread.

“Hist!”

She stood silent again, her eyes fixed on Bertrand’s face.

“Quick! Search the tower! I am afraid for Arletta!”

Bertrand gave her one look, pushed past her without a word, took down the torch, and went out into the gallery leading to the tower. TiphaÏne’s foreboding had taken hold of his man’s heart. As he passed down the gallery with the torch flaring above his head he looked out from the narrow windows, and saw the moon rising huge and tawny over the forest. The night had built an eerie background before Bertrand’s eyes. He felt suddenly afraid, strong man that he was—afraid of what the dark tower might hide within its walls.

Coming to the newel stairway, black as a well, he stood listening, holding his breath. Before him was the door of the lesser solar. The darkness and silence seemed to come close about his heart. He opened his lips, and was startled by the harshness of his own voice.

“Letta, Letta!”

Still no sound.

“Letta, Letta, where are you? Come, you are forgiven.”

He stood listening till the echoes had died down the gallery where the moonlight streaked the floor. What was that! A sound as of weeping, a number of sharp-drawn breaths, and then a short cry, given as in pain. Bertrand started like a horse touched with the spur. He stumbled up the stairway, for the sounds came from above, the torchlight reddening the walls, the smoke driven down by the draught into his face.

A door barred his progress. He tore at the latch savagely, and felt something heavy against the door as he forced it back and slipped into the room. His foot touched a hand; the hand moved. A whispering moan came up to him out of the dark.

Bertrand was down on his knees with the torch flaring on the floor beside him. Behind the door, and half crushed between it and the wall, lay Arletta, her head sunk upon one shoulder. There was blood on her limp hands, blood soaking her bosom, the whiteness of death upon her face.

Bertrand, shocked to his heart’s depths, thrust his arms about her, and drew her to him out of the dark. He was babbling foolishly, calling her by name, bidding her take courage and forget his roughness. Arletta’s head lay heavy on his shoulder. She stirred a little, sighed, and lifted her hands. For a moment her lips moved, and her eyes looked into Bertrand’s face.

“Lording—”

“Letta, what have you done? My God—”

“Lording, I am dying.”

Bertrand burst out weeping, his man’s tears falling down upon her face. Arletta shuddered. Her mouth was close to Bertrand’s cheek, and he felt her warm blood soaking his surcoat.

“Lording, kiss me, forgive—”

He kissed her, his arms tightening about her body. She lifted her hand jerkily, unsteadily, and felt his hair. Then with a long sigh her head sank down, her mouth opened, and she was dead.

Bertrand knelt there holding her in his arms, stunned, incredulous, his hot tears falling down upon her lifeless face. He spoke to her, touched her lips, but she did not answer. It was thus that TiphaÏne found them, death and life together, with the torch setting fire to the wood-work of the floor.

TiphaÏne trod out the flame, and, standing with the candle in her hands she had taken from the chapel, looked down at Bertrand with Arletta lying in his arms. Her pity and her awe were too deep for tears. She turned to leave them, but paused before the door.

“Bertrand,” she said.

He groaned, kissed the dead face, and then laid Arletta gently upon the floor. Still kneeling, he watched her, the truth—and the irrevocable bitterness thereof—coming home to him slowly with a great sense of shame.

“Bertrand.”

“Don’t speak to me”—and he buried his face deep in his hands—“let me bear it out alone.”

TiphaÏne passed out, leaving the candle burning in a sconce upon the wall. She groped her way down to the moonlit gallery, and so to the chapel, where she knelt before the altar, her face turned to the figure upon the cross. But Bertrand watched all night beside Arletta’s body, holding the hands that were cold in death.