"Not now, not now!" She had to answer, though it might provoke stern issues. "Once it would have been. There is nothing you could have told me that I would not have believed. But you delivered me over to the snare of the fowler." Grandmother had read those words in her morning chapter, and they had stayed in her ears as meaning precisely this thing. He had known that it was a snare, and he had cast her into it. She turned her moved face upon him. "We mustn't talk about these things. Nobody knows where it will end. And you mustn't talk to me about the prince."
"If it doesn't mean anything to you, wouldn't it move you if I told you it meant something to me?"
"What?"
"It would mean a great deal if you formed an alliance there."
She answered bitterly.
"You are humorous. Alliance! An alliance is for princes. There are other words for these things you propose. I try not to think what they are. I dare say I don't know all of them. But there are words."
"It would make me solid with the prince. He would get several concessions from his brother. They would be slight, but they would mean a great deal to the Brotherhood."
"I see. You would pull a wire or two in Germany. In Russia, too, perhaps? You think you would disarm suspicion, if the prince stood by you. Maybe you'd get into Russia, even. Is that it? It would be dramatic to get into Russia after you'd been warned."
She was following his mind along, as she often did, creeping with doubtful steps where he had taken wing. "But still!" She looked at him, smiling rather wistfully. "Still, you wouldn't throw me to the wolves for that, would you?"
He met her look with one as candid, and little as she believed in the accompanying smile, she felt her heart warmed by it. Now he was gazing about him at the summer prospect.