"We have no choice. I have seen this throughout. If I have helped you—as I love to think I have—to tear aside the coils that were binding you fast to the wheels of ruin, I have done it in full knowledge of all this; of what must be; of what neither you nor I nor we two together, if we were true to ourselves, could possibly prevent. You must not, you shall not be false to your duty and your country."
"No, no. It is too much to ask."
"In so far as I have helped you, I have a right to ask you. I press that right with all my power."
His face changed and with a glance of resistance, he answered, quickly:
"It may be easy since you do not care——"
"Karl!" The cry stopped him. His look changed again, and he tossed up his hands and drooped his head.
"I am ashamed," he murmured. "Heaven knows, I have not your strength."
"Don't make that mistake. This is as hard for me as it can be for you. Harder perhaps, for to a woman her heart thoughts must be always more than to a man. Our lives are so much emptier. We need have no concealment now. When I first met you here, I thought—so little does a woman know her heart—that the old feeling was dead; that the long-nurtured resentment of the past had killed it. I was hot against you when you did not recognize me, and burned with indignation. But I did not know."
"Nor yesterday, when we spoke together?" he broke in, eagerly.
"Ah, yes, I began to know then, and to be glad. Not glad with the joy of expected happiness; but so glad that I had been wrong in the years between. But when, to-night, I found this"—and I took out the little ribbon favour—"then indeed I knew all."