"And it is—?"
She paused again, with a look of appeal against which he had to stiffen himself.
"I do not believe the time has come," she said at length.
"You think the people are not ready for the constitution?"
She answered with an effort: "I think the people are not ready for it."
He fell silent, and they sat facing each other, but with eyes apart.
"You have received this impression from Gamba, from Andreoni—from the members of our party?" he asked.
She made no reply.
"Remember, Fulvia," he went on almost sternly, "that this is the end for which we have worked together all these years—the end for which we renounced each other and went forth in our youth, you to exile and I to an unwilling sovereignty. It was because we loved this cause better than ourselves that we had strength to give up for it our personal hopes of happiness. If we betray the cause from any merely personal motive we shall have fallen below our earlier selves." He waited again, but she was still silent. "Can you swear to me," he went on, "that no such motive influences you now? That you honestly believe we have been deceived and mistaken? That our years of faith and labour have been wasted, and that, if mankind is to be helped, it is to be in other ways and by other efforts than ours?"
He stood before her accusingly, almost, the passion of the long fight surging up in him as he felt the weapon drop from his hand.