"I want you to know, it is your right to know," he answered, with a very fierceness of pride and sorrow. "I am going to place in your power more than you have given me to-day. Hand me to those who hunt me, give me the pistol promised and the word to use it, but keep my confidence. Forgive me, I am not distrustful, only trying to show what I mean."
"I understand."
Allard looked down at the polished surface of the table, his pallor deepening if possible, then suddenly brought his eyes back to Stanief's and began to speak.
It was a very quiet story, very quietly told. It had never occurred to the Anglo-Saxon Allard to idealize his course into heroism; even mistaken heroism. Rather, he had learned to see more clearly, to condemn himself, during those long, bitter months. He bore no resentment for the punishment inflicted; simply it seemed to him that he had paid enough. Over the weeks of suffering in the hospital, the bitterness of the public trial with its torturing dread of recognition, he passed in a few brief words. Of Theodora he spoke only as his cousin and as Robert's betrothed; yet dimly he felt that the mute Stanief was reading all he left untold.
"There was no other way," he concluded, and the phrase was the key-note to all. "Undoubtedly it was the wrong way, but there was no other I could find, and I had to take care of them."
So far he had spoken of those he loved merely by their relationship. It was the final trust that Stanief asked by his next question:
"Will you tell me your name?"
And Allard laid his heart in the other's hand.
"John Leslie Allard," he answered.
There was an instant's pause. Stanief folded his arms on the table and spoke in his turn with no less quiet sincerity.