“We are all practical. My dear friend, you do not know us.”
“True; but suppose you are wrong and that in some places the troops stand by the Government, what will you do?”
“Should we legislate for the impossible?” and he went on with a hundred and fifty unconvincing and inconsequent reasons why nothing of the kind could occur. “We are offering liberty—liberty, the grandest gift on God’s green earth—not only to the people, but to the soldiers themselves. They are not fools, or blind, or idiots to refuse it.”
“But your troops here are not Poles, but Russians hating the Poles; and the disposition of the regiments all over the Empire is on the same principle. Do you tell me that national and tribal hatreds are going to be smothered just because a few good fellows like you hold up your hands and cry ‘Liberty’? To put it in a nutshell, if you believe this, why are you afraid of what Bremenhof can do in regard to Volna?”
To my surprise and concern he collapsed entirely. He threw himself into a chair and pressed his hand to his face. “Don’t, don’t,” he cried. “You give life and form to the one deadly fear that chills me when I can’t suppress it; that haunts me at night like a spectre, and paralyzes me with the agony of its hideous possibilities. I dare not think of it, my friend; I dare not. God, God, I dare not.”
I said no more. He was curious material for revolutionary work; but if there were many like him, the Fraternity was a much less formidable body than I had deemed, despite the evidence I had had of its widespread organization.
Presently he roused himself, stood up and apparently with only the slightest effort shook off his depression.
“I didn’t mean to inflict this on you,” he said, with a smile, charming but almost pathetically weary.
My patience was nearly exhausted, however. “What are you going to do to save her?” I asked bluntly.
He shook back his long hair, and smiled. “To-morrow there will be no more thought or talk of danger.”