She still gazed at him unbelieving, but he met her glance squarely.
"You need not believe me unless you choose, but I speak the truth. My orders were to bring you safely into Germany, or to—to eliminate you. Perhaps you will understand now my difficulties in keeping you unscathed."
"My death would have relieved you of that responsibility. It would have been so easy to have let me die——"
"I could not!" He bent his head over his folded arms. "I could not," he repeated. And then, after a silence, "Countess Strahni, I beg that you will consider that I have succeeded so far in saving you from personal danger."
"And yet you used me as a shield to save yourself from the bullets of the man you killed——" She broke off, laughing bitterly.
"He would not fire. I knew it. He was a fool to give me the chance. I took it. There was nothing else——"
"It was murder. And you——"
She glanced at him once and then turning away, hid her head in her arm. "O God!" she whispered, as though to herself. "How I loathe you!"
Though the words were not even meant for him to hear, he did not miss them.
"That is your privilege," he said after a moment, "and mine—to—to adore you," he said in deep accents.