“Marie,” he said, “those written words—which summoned you to him—were his?”
She hesitated. He raised his hand.
“Marie,” he said, solemnly, “answer me as though your foot were upon the threshold of eternity. Remember that the name of Reist will become a name of shame for ever if you speak falsely. He is young, and he came here a stranger to us and our traditions. With our country in peril I might forgive for the while his broken troth—if that were all. But if he has dared to hold you lightly—that I cannot forgive. Tell me the truth! Was that message, indeed, from him which summoned you to a clandestine meeting?”
She met his fixed gaze with beating heart. Her bosom rose and fell quickly. She was torn with a hundred emotions. At last she answered.
“Nicholas,” she said, “I know nothing of that note. I sought the king of my own free will.”
Reist paced the room with quick, uneven footsteps. Marie sat at the table, her head buried in her hands. He did not approach her. Through the open window came the dull booming of guns. The sound was a torture to him.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, at last.
“God only knows!” he answered, bitterly. “I have no King and no country. Yet if I stay here I shall go mad.”
She removed her hands from her face and looked at him stealthily.
“If there were a way,” she whispered, “to save Theos, and to be avenged on Ughtred of Tyrnaus.”