“Here’s the door on the staircase, but it will not open!”

I groped over every inch of it with swift haste in the blackness.

“Hurry—­hurry!” she breathed.  “He may touch the spring himself—­it moves instantly!”

“Does this open with a spring, too?”

“I don’t know.  Sophie didn’t know!”

“Are you sure there is any door here?”

“She told me there was.”

“This is like a door, but it will not move.”

It sprang inward against us, a rush of air and a hollow murmur as of wind along the river, following it.

“Go—­be quick!” said Madame de Ferrier.

“But how will you get out?”

“I shall get out when you are gone.”

“O, Eagle, forgive me!” (Yet I would have dragged her in with me again!)

“I am in no danger.  You are in danger.  Goodbye, my liege.”

Cautiously she pushed me through the door, begging me to feel for every step.  I stood upon the top one, and held to her as I had held to her in passing through the other wall.

I thought of the heavy days before her and the blank before me.  I could not let go her wrists.  We were fools to waste our youth.  I could work for her in America.  My vitals were being torn from me.  I should go to the devil without her.  I don’t know what I said.  But I knew the brute love which had risen like a lion in me would never conquer the woman who kissed me in the darkness and held me at bay.

“O Louis—­O Lazarre!  Think of Paul and Cousin Philippe!  You shall be your best for your little mother!  I will come to you sometime!”

Then she held the door between us, and I went down around and around the spiral of stone.

BOOK III

ARRIVING

I

Even when a year had passed I said of my escape from the Tuileries:  “It was a dream.  How could it have happened?” For the adventures of my wandering fell from me like a garment, leaving the one changeless passion.

Skenedonk and I met on the ship a New England minister, who looked upon and considered us from day to day.  I used to sit in the stern, the miles stretching me as a rack stretches flesh and tendons.  The minister regarded me as prostrated by the spider bite of that wicked Paris; out of which he learned I had come, by talking to my Oneida.

The Indian and I were a queer pair that interested him, and when he discovered that I bore the name of Eleazar Williams his friendship was sealed to us.  Eunice Williams of Deerfield, the grandmother of Thomas Williams, was a traditional brand never snatched from the burning, in the minister’s town of Longmeadow, where nearly every inhabitant was descended from or espoused to a Williams.  Though he himself was born Storrs, his wife was born Williams; and I could have lain at his feet and cried, so open was the heart