"I think I must be dreaming," stammered Maxime, all his bitterness forgotten. "I've been ill. I don't understand things as quickly as I used. Escape! You have come here to—help me to escape. Yes, it is certainly a dream. I shall wake up by and by!"
"You will wake up free," said Virginia not daring to raise her voice above a low monotone. "Free, on our yacht, that has brought us from France to take you home."
Suddenly a glaze of tears overspread Maxime Dalahaide's dark eyes. "Home?" he echoed wistfully. "Home! Ah, if it might be!"
"It shall be," returned Virginia. "George, tell him our plan. You can do it better than I."
"The thing is to get you on board the yacht," said Trent. "After that, you're all right. We can show our heels to pretty well anything in these parts."
Dalahaide shook his head. "There are no words to thank you for what you have done, and would do for me," he answered. "But it is impossible. Once I thought of escape. I tried and failed, as others have tried and failed. After the second time, they put me in the Black Cell, and I saved myself from madness by calling to memory all of Shakespeare that I had ever learned. I don't say 'impossible' because I am afraid of that again. I have passed beyond fear of anything. What have I left to dread? I know the worst; I have lived through the worst that can befall a man. But in that dreadful blackness, where my very soul seemed to dissolve in night, I realized that, even if I could escape, how useless freedom would be if my innocence were not proved. I could not go to France or England. I should live a hunted life. As well be an exile here as nearer home—better, perhaps, now that the first bitterness has passed."
"You think this because you've been ill, and your blood runs slow," said George Trent. "All you need is to be strong again, and——"
"Strong again!" echoed Maxime, with sorrowful contempt. "I've been thanking heaven that I hadn't strength enough left to care for anything. It's true, as you say; the oil in my lamp of life burns low, and so much the better for me. What I want now is to get it all over as soon as may be. You are kind—you are so good to me that I am lost in wonder; yet even you cannot give me a freedom worth having. Take back my love to my sister, but tell her—tell her that I am content to stay as I am."
"Content to die, you mean!" cried Virginia.
"Oh, you are ill indeed to feel like this. How can you bear to stay here, when you have a chance to be a free man—even if not a happy man—to stay here, and let your enemy, who sent you to this place, laugh and think how his plot against you has succeeded?"