"Once!" she repeated bitterly. "You were younger then—and so was I!" She glanced at herself in the mirror with a dissatisfied laugh. Something in her look and movement touched the springs of compassion.
"Try me again," he said gently. "If I am older, perhaps I am also wiser, and therefore even more willing to be guided—we all knew that." She broke off, as though she felt her mistake and wished to make a fresh beginning. Again her face was full of fluctuating meaning; and he saw, beneath its shallow surface, the eddy of incoherent impulses. When she spoke, it was with a noble gravity.
"Your Highness," she said, "does not take me into your counsels; but it is no secret at court and in the town that you have in contemplation a grave political measure."
"I have made no secret of it," he replied.
"No—or I should be the last to know it!" she exclaimed, with one of her sudden lapses into petulance.
Odo made no reply. Her futility was beginning to weary him. She saw it and again attempted an impersonal dignity of manner.
"It has been your Highness's choice," she said, "to exclude me from public affairs. Perhaps I was not fitted by education or intelligence to share in the cares of government. Your Highness will at least bear witness that I have scrupulously respected your decision, and have never attempted to intrude upon your counsels."
Odo bowed. It would have been useless to remind her that he had sought her help and failed to obtain it.
"I have accepted my position," she continued. "I have led the life to which it has pleased your Highness to restrict me. But I have not been able to detach my heart as well as my thoughts from your Highness's interests. I have not learned to be indifferent to your danger."
Odo looked up quickly. She ceased to interest him when she spoke by the book, and he was impatient to make an end.