He looked at her gravely for a few moments, making, perhaps, a last quick calculation—undergoing, perhaps, a last short struggle. But the Red Star glowed against the pallor of her face; her eyes were gleaming beacons.
"Neither the guns, nor the men, nor Slavna—no, nor the Crown, when that time comes—without you!" he said.
She rose slowly, tremblingly, from her chair, and stretched out her hands in an instinctive protest: "Monseigneur!" Then she clasped her hands, setting her eyes on his, and whispering again, yet lower: "Monseigneur!"
"Marie Zerkovitch says Fate sent you to Kravonia. I think she's right. Fate did—my fate. I think it's fated that we are to be together to the end, Sophy."
A step creaked on the old stairs. Marie Zerkovitch was coming down from her room on the floor above. The door of the dining-room stood open, but neither of them heard the step; they were engrossed, and the sound passed unheeded.
Standing there with hands still clasped, and eyes still bound to his, she spoke again—and Marie Zerkovitch stood by the door and heard the quick yet clear words, herself fascinated, unable to move or speak.
"I've meant nothing of it. I've thought nothing of it. I seem to have done nothing towards it. It has just come to me." Her tone took on a touch of entreaty, whether it were to him, or to some unseen power which ruled her life, and to which she might have to render an account.
"Yet it is welcome?" he asked quietly. She was long in answering; he waited without impatience, in a confidence devoid of doubt. She seemed to seek for the whole truth and to give it to him in gravest, fullest words.
"It is life, Monseigneur," she said. "I can't see life without it now."
He held out his hands, and very slowly she laid hers in them.