"Forgive you?" said she. "My dear Nicholas, you do not suppose I seriously think there is anything to forgive?"
"But it is true," he said piteously; "in ruining me they have ruined you. Mon Dieu, mon Dieu! If I only had a friend—"
"Taisez vous donc, mon ami. It is everything most bête what you say. You have many friends, and as for me, I do not care a straw for the money. Only if I had known I would not have left Europe. Voilà tout."
"Ah, that is it," said Nicholas. "I escaped the police and hurried to Baden. But you were gone. So I took the first steamer and came here. But I have waited ten days, and it was only last night I saw in the papers that you had arrived yesterday morning. And here I am."
Margaret rose, from a feeling that she must move about—the restless fiend that seizes energetic people in their trouble. Nicholas thought it was a sign for him to go. He took his hat.
"Believe me—" he began, about to take his leave.
"You are not going?" said Margaret. "Oh no. Wait, and we will think of some expedient. Besides you have not told me half what I want to know. The money is of no consequence; but what had you done to lead to such a sentence? Are you really a Nihilist?"
"Dieu m'en garde!" said the Count devoutly. "I am a Republican, that is all. Seulement, our Holy Russia does not distinguish."
"Is not the distinction very subtle?"
"The difference between salvation by education and salvation by dynamite; the difference between building up and tearing down, between Robespierre and Monsieur Washington."