'Listen to me,' he said, his jaw stiffening as he spoke; 'some of us have got to keep our sanity in this crisis. You know better than I, for you have described it to me, that this country has been darkened with ignorance just as Germany and the rest have been. This is the climax of it all—and you're going to help it on, instead of having the courage to take your stand. Elise, to-night I pledged my whole life to a crusade against the darkness that men are forced to endure. It is going to be a long fight, and perhaps a hopeless one, although some day, somehow, the cause must win. And I need your inspiration. Oh, my dear, my dear, you must know how much I love you. Every minute that you're away I'm hungry for you. When we were together that evening by the stream I longed so to take you in my arms that my heart ached with the repression I forced on myself. I have known that there were a thousand difficulties in the way, and I was not going to speak, but the other night when you met your brother by the oak'——
'Oh! you were spying.'
'It was an accident. I said nothing to you about it, but I thought that perhaps you needed me a little, that it might be my privilege to share your sorrow. And to-night, dear, I know that together we could work and live, and be a tremendous power for good.'
Her face, which had gone strangely pale, was darkened by a return of the crimson flush.
'Do you think I'd marry you,' she exclaimed scornfully—'a man who counsels treason?'
'I counsel loyalty to the higher citizenship.'
'H'mm!' Her shoulders contracted, and forcing her wrists free of his hands, she looked haughtily into his burning eyes. 'You had better go back to America and tell them there of this ignorant little island whose men are so crude and stupid that when the King calls they go to war.'
'Elise'——
'I would rather marry the poorest groom in our stables than you. He would at least be a man.'
'I have not deserved this, Elise. God knows I am no more a coward than other men, but I feel that I have seen a great truth which demands my loyalty.'