“Courage, friend, courage!” I cried. “All is not lost. Keep a stout heart, for Etienne Gerard is by your side.”
“Etienne!” It was a woman's voice which spoke– a voice which was always music to my ears. I sprang through the gap and I flung my arms round her.
“Lucia! Lucia!” I cried.
It was “Etienne!” and “Lucia!” for some minutes, for one does not make speeches at moments like that. It was she who came to her senses first.
“Oh, Etienne, they will kill you. How came you into their hands?”
“In answer to your letter.”
“I wrote no letter.”
“The cunning demons! But you?”
“I came also in answer to your letter.”
“Lucia, I wrote no letter.”
“They have trapped us both with the same bait.”
“I care nothing about myself, Lucia. Besides, there is no pressing danger with me. They have simply returned me to my cell.”
“Oh, Etienne, Etienne, they will kill you. Lorenzo is there.”
“The old greybeard?”
“No, no, a young dark man. He loved me, and I thought I loved him until– until I learned what love is, Etienne. He will never forgive you. He has a heart of stone.”
“Let them do what they like. They cannot rob me of the past, Lucia. But you– what about you?”
“It will be nothing, Etienne. Only a pang for an instant and then all over. They mean it as a badge of infamy, dear, but I will carry it like a crown of honour since it was through you that I gained it.”
Her words froze my blood with horror. All my adventures were insignificant compared to this terrible shadow which was creeping over my soul.
“Lucia! Lucia!” I cried. “For pity's sake tell me what these butchers are about to do. Tell me, Lucia! Tell me!”
“I will not tell you, Etienne, for it would hurt you far more than it would me. Well, well, I will tell you lest you should fear it was something worse. The president has ordered that my ear be cut off, that I may be marked for ever as having loved a Frenchman.”
Her ear! The dear little ear which I had kissed so often. I put my hand to each little velvet shell to make certain that this sacrilege had not yet been committed.
Only over my dead body should they reach them. I swore it to her between my clenched teeth.
“You must not care, Etienne. And yet I love that you should care all the same.”
“They shall not hurt you– the fiends!”
“I have hopes, Etienne. Lorenzo is there. He was silent while I was judged, but he may have pleaded for me after I was gone.”