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Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France by Stanley John Weyman
page 81 of 411 (19%)
abruptness of the outburst, Mademoiselle had shrunk from her fate; she
had known fear. Now that she stood out voluntarily to meet it, she, like
many a woman before and since, feared no longer. She was lifted out of
and above herself.

But death was long in coming. Some cause beyond their knowledge stayed
the onrush of the mob along the street. The din, indeed, persisted,
deafened, shook them; but the crowd seemed to be at a stand a few doors
down the Rue St. Honore. For a half-minute, a long half-minute, which
appeared an age, it drew no nearer. Would it draw nearer? Would it come
on? Or would it turn again?

The doubt, so much worse than despair, began to sap that courage of the
man which is always better fitted to do than to suffer. The sweat rose
on Tignonville's brow as he stood listening, his arm round the girl--as
he stood listening and waiting. It is possible that when he had said a
minute or two earlier that he would rather die a thousand times than live
thus shamed, he had spoken beyond the mark. Or it is possible that he
had meant his words to the full. But in this case he had not pictured
what was to come, he had not gauged correctly his power of passive
endurance. He was as brave as the ordinary man, as the ordinary soldier;
but martyrdom, the apotheosis of resignation, comes more naturally to
women than to men, more hardly to men than to women. Yet had the crisis
come quickly he might have met it. But he had to wait, and to wait with
that howling of wild beasts in his ears; and for this he was not
prepared. A woman might be content to die after this fashion; but a man?
His colour went and came, his eyes began to rove hither and thither. Was
it even now too late to escape? Too late to avoid the consequences of
the girl's silly persistence? Too late to--? Her eyes were closed, she
hung half lifeless on his arm. She would not know, she need not know
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