“No, I did not,” I answered quietly; “I knew you;” and her eyes thanked me for the words. “I should remind you, too, that this check has come so suddenly and prematurely for our plans that there are very few who are really involved in any danger. We have barely had time to throw off the veil of Russia’s sanction of our efforts, so that there are scarcely more than a handful of us who know the real object of the scheme; and General Kolfort would be unable to bring home even to them any acts against Russia. It is he who has encouraged the plans laid ‘In the Name of a Woman,’ and his own writing was in evidence to prove it. You will remember my early insistence upon the necessity for obtaining his written sanction. In the face of that I do not see that he could produce proofs to convict anyone except our trusty Zoiloff and Spernow, and say two or three others.”
“But yourself?” she cried, in a tone of quick alarm.
“I do not regard the consequences to myself as very serious, Princess,” I said calmly.
“I shall not run away,” she said, taking what I said as an argument in favour of her seeking her own safety, and she paused again to think. “Could I go myself to General Kolfort; give up everything on condition of his visiting it all on me? I am responsible.”
It was a true woman’s offer, and a noble one; but I shook my head.
“I fear it would be hopeless. He would but drag from you all that you could tell him, and then use the information remorselessly and without a scruple against those implicated. You would do the very thing you seek to avoid.” Her face fell as she saw the truth of this, and she sighed heavily.
“But this alternative—what is it but a wild forlorn hope? A desperate step with scarce a chance of success? May not the consequences be a thousandfold worse than the worst that can come of doing nothing? Have you thought of what would happen if we failed? You said just now that so far only a few are openly embroiled; but should we not be forcing each man to declare himself, and would not each be marked out plainly as a target for Russian malice?”
“There is the hope of success, even if it be forlorn. There are many of us who think it better to fight and fail than not to fight at all.”
“I do not like it; I am afraid of it. The chances are so few; the risks so enormous to others. I dare not sanction it.”
“We are men; the cause is a noble one; enthusiasm has spread everywhere, and a lesser spirit has ere now led a feebler movement to success. There is not one of us, I believe, who would stand back in fear.”