"In me, then?"
She smiled with a disarming sadness. "That would be so much simpler!" she murmured.
"What do you mean, then?" he urged. "We must understand each other." He paused, and measured his words out slowly. "Do you think it a mistake to proclaim the constitution tomorrow?"
Again her face was full of shadowy contradictions. "I entreat you not to proclaim it tomorrow," she said in a low voice.
Odo felt the blood drum in his ears. Was not this the word for which he had waited? But still some deeper instinct held him back, warning him, as it seemed, that to fall below his purpose at such a juncture was the only measurable failure. He must know more before he yielded, see deeper into her heart and his; and each moment brought the clearer conviction that there was more to know and see.
"This is unlike you, Fulvia," he said. "You cannot make such a request on impulse. You must have a reason."
She smiled. "You told me once that a woman's reasons are only impulses in men's clothes."
But he was not to be diverted by this thrust. "I shall think so now," he said, "unless you can give me some better account of yours!"
She was silent, and he pressed on with a persistency for which he himself could hardly account: "You must have a reason for this request."
"I have one," she said, dropping her attempts at evasion.