"I am unarmed," John Bulmer said; "and weaponless, I cannot hold even a trap-door against armed men."
"I have brought you weapons," Claire returned, and waved one hand toward the outer passageway. "Naturally I would not overlook that. There were many dead men on my way hither, and they had no need of weapons. I have a sword here and two pistols."
"You are," said John Bulmer, with supreme conviction, "the most wonderful woman in the universe. By all means let us get to the top of this infernal tower and live there as long as we may find living possible. But first, will you permit me to make myself a thought tidier? For in my recent agitation as to your whereabouts I have, I perceive, somewhat disordered both my person and my apparel."
Claire laughed a little sadly. "You have been sincere for once in your existence, and you are hideously ashamed, is it not? Ah, my friend, I would like you so much better if you were not always playing at life, not always posing as if for your portrait."
"For my part," he returned, obscurely, from the rear of a wet towel, "I fail to perceive any particular merit in dying with a dirty face. We are about to deal with a most important and, it well may be, the final crisis of our lives. So let us do it with decency."
Afterward John Bulmer changed his cravat, since the one he wore was soiled and crumpled and stained a little with his blood; and they went up the winding stairway to the top of the Constable's Tower. These two passed through the trap-door into a moonlight which drenched the world; westward the higher walls of the Hugonet Wing shut off that part of Bellegarde where men were slaughtering one another, and turrets, black and untenanted, stood in strong relief against a sky of shifting crimson and gold. At their feet was the tiny enclosed garden half-hidden by the poplar boughs. To the east the Tower dropped sheer to the moat; and past that was the curve of the highway leading to the main entrance of the château, and beyond this road you saw Amneran and the moonlighted plains of the Duardenez, and one little tributary, a thread of pulsing silver, in passage to the great river which showed as a smear of white, like a chalk-mark on the world's rim.