And afterwards she would thank him! Afterwards--meantime the window was open, the street was empty, and still the crowd hung back and did not come.
He remembered that two doors away was a narrow passage, which leaving the Rue St.Honore turned at right angles under a beetling archway, to emerge in the Rue du Roule.

If he could gain that passage unseen by the mob! He _would_ gain it.

With a swift movement, his mind made up, he took a step forward.

He tightened his grasp of the girl's waist, and, seizing with his left hand the end of the bar which the assailants had torn from its setting in the window jamb, he turned to lower himself.

One long step would land him in the street.
At that moment she awoke from the stupor of exaltation.