"I think so."

"Is there any way of telling when Goritz goes to bed?"

"I hear his steps sometimes in the corridor outside."

He went noiselessly over to the door, listened a moment and then returned.

"No sounds. There isn't much sleep for anyone here tonight. The noise and the knowledge that Herr Windt is somewhere near----"

"Herr Windt!"

"He has followed us here. I think he found a trace of me at Bartfeld--the village beyond the mountain," he whispered.

"But we might go down through the castle and the courtyard--if we could pass the man at the drawbridge. Does it make a noise when it is lowered?"

"Oh, yes, Hugh--a dreadful noise."

"That's awkward." He crossed to the door into the wainscoting and listened there, then at the other door into the corridor, and returned to her.

"For the present, at least, we're safe."

He caught her in his arms and held her silently. Her arms clinging to him, she raised her head and found his lips.

"Beloved," she whispered, "how did you----"

"I followed you here--on a mere fragment of a clew--but it was enough."

"But he shot you----"

"I was well cared for--in a hospital."

"You were wounded--dangerously?"

"Yes, but I don't die easily. I'm quite well again."

"Are you sure?"

He laughed. "Could I be here, else? Your cliffs are steep----"

"You climbed----?"

"Yes, up a fissure and through the ruins. I saw you--there in the window--from across the gorge. I heard you call, Marishka----"

"Call----?"

"That you were not afraid to die."

"But I _was_ afraid, Hugh--it was so far--so dark below." She shuddered.

He pressed her closer to him. "Has he--has Goritz----"

"Until tonight, Hugh--he has not been unkind," she said slowly. "I was sick; he nursed me. But I've feared him--I fear him still----"

He felt her body trembling against his own, and reassured her gently, pausing a moment to listen tensely for sounds at either door. And then----

"Don't worry, dearest. He cannot harm you. I was not spared from death for nothing."

"I am not frightened now, but tonight has been horrible--the noise--my terror of I know not what. It has been like the end of the world to me."

"The beginning of our world, yours and mine," he said confidently.

She straightened, drew away from him and put a hand before her eyes again. "Even yet I cannot believe." She looked up at him with a wide gaze that still held in it something of the reflection of the long days of helplessness and misery--something more deeply spiritual than he had ever seen. "Hugh, dear," she went on softly, "you will think it strange, but I--I have heard you calling to me--speaking to me, like a living presence here in this room. Not as you are now, beloved, but paler.... I thought that you were dead.... And so when you came--at the door--I thought--I must have dreamed----"

"You were frightened, dear."

"Yes--terribly frightened, Hugh," she confessed, "by _him_--and by the firing. It seemed at times as though the castle were rocking under me.

Listen!"

A terrific cannonading began again--louder, more continuous than any that had gone before.

"Yes--they are fighting for the end of the Pass," he muttered; "the Russians----"

"And will they----?"

"God knows. I pray----" he paused and scanned her face anxiously.

"What, Hugh?"

"That the Russians may win."

She started away from him, her eyes widely inquiring.

"Why?"

He smiled slowly.

"It's simple enough. Because if I am taken by the Austrians I shall be shot as a spy."

"You--a spy!"

"No, not really," he said soberly. "But I'm an Englishman, an enemy of Austria armed and in disguise. That is enough----"

"They--my people would shoot you!" She whispered, horror-stricken.

"I have no illusions about my fate--if taken----"

"But you have come here--to help me----"

"Unfortunately that does not change matters."