"No," he burst out almost violently, stopping close and facing me. "If you go, you know how it will be with me."
I looked at him firmly, and after a pause said in a deliberate tone: "If you cannot rise to the higher life, what matters to your country if you fall to the lower. And as with your country, so with me."
The words cut him till he winced as in pain, and dropped again into a seat.
"Can you say that—to me?"
My heart was wrung at the sight of his anguish, but I would not let him see it. "You had better go—please," I said; for the silence became intolerable.
He paid no heed to my words, but sat on and on in this attitude of dejected despair; and when after the long silence he looked up his face was grey with the struggle, so that I dared not look into his eyes for fear my resolve would be broken and I should yield. For firm as my words had been, my heart was all aching and pleading to do what he wished.
"You need not turn your eyes from me, Christabel," he said, a little unsteady in tone. "You have beaten me. It shall be as you say; although I would rather die than go back to the desert. Pray God the victory will cost you less than it costs me to yield."
I think he could read in my eyes what the cost was likely to be to me: I am sure my heart was speaking through them in the moment while my tongue could find no words.
"I knew you would be true to yourself," I said at length.
"No, anything but that. No credit to me. I only yield because to resist means your abandonment of what you hold so dear. That must not be in any case."