She had
not been woman otherwise.
III
An intense stillness brooded over the city. The night was starless, the
sea black as ink. Stephanie stood alone in the darkness of her balcony,
and listened to the silence.
Seven days had elapsed since her interview with Pierre Dumaresq--seven
days of horrible, nerve-racking suspense, of anguished foreboding, of
ever-creeping, leaden-footed despair. And now at last, though the
suspense still held her, she knew that the end had come. Only that
evening, as her carriage had been turning in at the palace gates, a bomb
had been flung under the wheels. By some miracle it had not exploded.
She had passed on unharmed.
But the ghastly incident was to her as the sounding of her own
death-knell. Standing there with her face to the sea, she was telling
herself that she would never see the daylight again. The very soldiers
that guarded them were revolutionists at heart. They were only waiting,
so she believed, for a strong man's word of command to throw open the
palace doors to frenzied murderers.
No sound came up to her from the motionless sea, no faintest echo of
waves upon the shore. The stillness hung like a weight upon the senses.
There was something sinister about it, something vaguely terrible. Yet,
as she stood there waiting, she was not afraid. Something deeper than
fear was in her heart. Pulsing through and through her like an electric
current was a deep and passionate revolt against the fate that awaited
her.
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