But the marquis did not stop to help. His eyes saw; his brain registered the stark fact of the thing; but there was no meaning to it, nor was there pity in his soul.
There was only the thought of his wife, up there, among the crumbling, choking ruins.
When he reached the hill whence once the castle of the Pozzo-Paolis had frowned on the village, he saw that nothing was left standing except an old carved Gothic wall, and above it, supported by iron corbels which were twisted into the silhouette of some grinning, obscene maw, a balcony swinging crazily from side to side like a gigantic spider-web.
He stopped, out of breath, shivering in spite of the heat which fanned up from the burning village, undecided what to do and how to do it.
Of course she was down there, somewhere among the jagged stones and the charred timbers.
But where should he begin his search? He knew that he must find her even if she was dead—that he could not leave her dead body crushed and buried by Corsican soil, a trophy to the lust of this sinister, man-killing land; and so, very gently, with infinite precautions, clutching a broken beam here and a twisted, bent end of metal there, he swung
