Her eyes looked into his, probed him.
“Nor have many here. Why do you release me?”
He lost control of himself in his eagerness to withdraw her from the danger into which he had himself wantonly plunged her.
“Because—because I love you! Because I cannot let you die!—Because—I cannot help it—you are all of life to me, citoyenne!”
She looked at him, her face like a carven sphinx, her eyes inscrutable.
“I go—wherever my father goes!”
He stood, deathly pale, wrestling with a terrible temptation. She watched his agony, without malice, without sympathy, cold like a slave in the market who may be bought—for a price. All of him that was human yearned for her, yearned for her unutterably in a surge of desire that all but overcame him—and yet an austere inner self, that self which had vowed itself to the idealized service of the Republic in youthful fanaticism, stood firm although it agonized. He felt himself a worthy spiritual successor of that Scaevola who stood with his hand in the fire, as he answered, cold sweat upon his brow.
“Citoyenne, it is impossible. I cannot buy even your love with my dishonour. Your father has committed a crime against the Republic—but you have committed none.”
She shrugged her shoulders in calm indifference. An insulting smile came into her face.
“Then I will do so!” She turned toward the prisonful of victims with the exultant gesture of a martyr who demands the stake, and cried, evidently with full lungs: “Vive le Roi! À bas la République!”