Then she made as if she would rise.
"Surely you are not going?" he pleaded.
"I have my work to do. I only stayed here a moment, in order to rest."
"And I am intruding?"
"Oh, scarcely," she replied quietly. "I was about to return to my work."
"Is it so urgent?"
"The business of a nation, M. le Comte, is always urgent."
"So urgent that you have no time now to give to old friends," he said bitterly.
She shrugged her shoulders with a quick, sarcastic laugh.
"Old friends? . . . Oh! . . ."