“Not that, for God’s sake,” I cried impetuously.
“Don’t think me a coward for naming it. It would take all the courage you think I have. But he knows how I love my mother, and that it would kill her to remain in prison. To-morrow she must be freed at any cost.”
“No, no, don’t think of that. Think of your own brave words in defying him.”
She smiled again. “That is just it. Brave words, nothing else. He knows they were but words.”
“I’ll find some other way. You’ll think differently to-morrow.”
She paused and then gave me her hand. “I’ll try. If any one can give me confidence you can.”
“How shall I see you to-morrow? Is there any risk in my coming to the house?”
“It will be better not. One never knows. I will be in the Square of St. Paul—where the strikers’ meetings were—at eleven o’clock. But, remember, my mother must be freed to-morrow at any cost.”
“Then I know what I have to do,” I answered, confidently, “and I repeat, I’ll do it somehow.”
As I turned away, having watched her enter the house she had indicated, I could not resist applying the phrase—“brave words, nothing else”—to my own resolve to find some means of bringing Bremenhof to terms. I could see no way to make it good, to make it more than mere words intended to encourage her. It looked a sheer impossibility.