“I cannot tell you. I have done what I can, but he himself is torn with doubts and fears. The sound of the guns, and the thought of the fighting goads him to madness. I have done what I promised. Through me he has broken with the King, and I have sent him to you. The rest you should have accomplished.”
“And so I should,” Domiloff declared, fiercely, “but for that cursed interruption. It is ill to do with men who do not know their own minds.”
“Or with women in the like straits, my friend,” she murmured.
He shot a quick glance at her.
“Of you,” he declared, quietly, “I have no fear. You would not see this American girl Queen of Theos. I do not think that you would stand in waiting before her throne.”
Marie’s face was for a moment white with passion. She seemed as though she would strike him. Domiloff watched her narrowly. He liked to be sure of every one with whom he had to deal, and there were times when she eluded him.
“No,” she answered at last. “It is not likely that I should do that. Baron Domiloff, I will show you the way to my brother’s room.”
“One moment.”
He touched her arm. She drew it away with an angry exclamation. Domiloff was not without vanity, and his personal repugnance to her, which she was at no pains to hide, galled him. For a moment he dared not trust himself to speak.
“Will you be so good as to remember,” she said, with cutting force, “that my toleration of you is on account of Theos, and Theos only. Personally, I hate all conspirators and plotters. The idea of this sort of thing and everybody connected with it is loathsome to me.”