"Sire, I am John Allard," he replied, giving that fact with the appeal of sincerity. "The Allard to whom Baron Dalmorov refers was my brother Robert. For the rest, it is perfectly true that I was not in California the year before I came here. The American who did not recognize me was of course my brother's guest during my absence."
"You do not comprehend," Adrian corrected sweetly. "I never intended to ask you to defend yourself against this chain of absurdities. I do not admire your assailant's methods, and I adopt my own. I would ask if both you and Dalmorov will be content with the evidence of a witness who knew the California Allards beyond dispute."
"Certainly, sire," he answered, wondering, yet welcoming any course that led them from New York.
"Sire, if any Californian identifies this man, of course my case fails," conceded Dalmorov with his bitter smile. "But, it will not be so."
"Pray ring the bell, Allard, twice," directed Adrian.
They waited in silence. Adrian moved to a chair. Stanief sought Allard's eyes with the steadying message of his own, an intensity of reassurance and protection. In reserve he was holding his own power to ruin Dalmorov, and he fiercely reproached himself with not having foreseen and used it before this could have happened.
But Allard showed no agitation to his keen watchers. It seemed to him that this had been closing around him for days, that he had felt the old things reclaiming him as the unseen net drew and tightened. Now there was nothing he could do; the moment balanced, ready to fall either way at the light touch of chance. Away from himself he laid the decision, before a higher tribunal than Adrian's, setting all his life against one error. The speech of his thought was the same as it once was on the wharf before the Hudson prison: "If I have paid—" Quietly, with a dignity all unconscious, he awaited the judgment.
A rustle of silken garments, a silver echo of a southern voice as the door opened, and Iría was in the room, Iría, flushed, smiling, and by her side a girl in white whom two of those present had never seen. As the Duchess swept her graceful salute to the Emperor, Allard's cry rang through the place:
"Theodora! Theodora!"
His answer was given. The girl held out her hands as he sprang forward to clasp them; there existed no one else for either during the long moment when they remained gazing in each other's eyes with the hunger of years.