Caruth threw out his hands. “Don’t fence with me,” he protested. “You know what she told me. You know you took her vows—the vows of a mere child—to devote her life and her beauty to your cause. You know that you are holding her practically for sale to the highest bidder—to him who will do most for that cause. It isn’t fair! It is an outrage on womanhood. It is trafficking in all that is holiest and highest in life. No cause will prosper that depends on such methods. Be advised! She has done her best for you. She has done more than most women could do. Release her! Let her marry me—if she will.”
Caruth’s breath came quick and fast. His words tumbled over each other. With outflung hands, he leaned forward across the heavy table.
Thoughtfully Lermantoff studied his face. “Mr. Caruth,” he said slowly, “all your life you have had everything you wanted. This is probably the first time you have had to fight and wait and hope for anything. You find it hard. Further, you are young. Your own happiness and the girl’s seem to you the most important things in the world. Really, they are not. What difference will it make to the world one hundred years from now whether you two marry or not? But it will make a great difference one hundred years from now whether the Russian people have won their freedom or not. We have trained Marie Fitzhugh for the work she has to do. We have no one in all the Brotherhood who can do that work so well. To give her up—to surrender this tool that we have fashioned so carefully—is to set back the cause by no one knows how many years. Consider a moment, Mr. Caruth! She went to New York and enlisted your coöperation with all your wealth and influence within an hour after she had landed. And do not think that it was all her beauty; it was more—it was her personality. Do I not know it? Have I not felt it myself?”
The speaker paused. Caruth, reading an unsuspected meaning in his last words and foreseeing complications, caught his breath, but Lermantoff gave him no time to consider. With unmistakable, though suppressed, emotion, he went on:
“Such powers as hers are mighty, not to be thrown lightly away. They have been reserved for some great end, for some moment when they might turn the scale of Russia’s destiny. For this reason I have denied myself.”
“What?”
“Yes! I tell you! Myself!” The man leaned forward, face aglow. His sinewy hands, clinched, thundered on the table. “What! Think you I have lived beside her and not loved her? Am I a dolt or a stone? Am I less a man because I am pledged to the Brotherhood? No, no, Mr. Caruth! I love her, love her—and I have denied myself. Shall I now yield her to you?”
Both men had forgotten the others. They might have been alone in a wilderness, for all heed they took of listeners. The one subject in their minds swallowed up all else.
Caruth moistened his dry lips. “She does not love you,” he muttered despairingly.
Lermantoff sank back, the fire dying from his eyes. “No,” he answered sadly; “she does not love me. Perhaps that was why. Oh, we are poor creatures, we men! We do not even know our own motives.” He brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen over his brow. “She does not love me, and she does love you. Therefore—oh, I am a sentimentalist after all—therefore, I would give her to you, were it even at Russia’s expense, if I alone had the power. But I have not. I am only one. The interests of the Brotherhood must be consulted.”