“Don’t!” he whispered, and he tried to close his eyes against the vision she had conjured up.
“If when you are back in America, you should hear ... anything, don’t take it with too much sorrow,” she went on. “Remember that, foreknowing the end, I have gone to it willingly, gladly—for my country’s sake.”
She said it quietly, with clear eyes, even faintly smiling. For many moments he gazed upon her, for whom life held every good there was, yet counting self as least of all. And as he gazed, something of her spirit crossed to him. Personal sorrow, personal happiness, seemed to grow a minor thing. Half his pain was swept away, and into him there thrilled a strange new exaltation.
“It is to do such things, I suppose, that we are given life,” he whispered.
Her gazed softened, her voice sank to an exquisite tenderness. “And though I stay, and you go, and half the world shall lie between us, we are not giving one another up, dearest. I shall ever be with you.”
“And I with you, my darling!” he breathed.
They talked on, of love, of danger, of what the future might hold, and then of love again. And thus their one short hour together sped away, and the time came when he must go. Their hands clasped and he looked long, long, into that glorious face which it might never be his to gaze upon again. Then he strained her to him.... And then they parted.
Parted, and yet not parted. For in the days when steam hurled land and sea behind him, and in those farther days when the fight with his uncle was on (and a fight it was indeed! as his uncle had promised), her spirit was as a presence at his side, giving him new strength and new courage, making it easier to live humbly and bravely, and play his part as a man. It was as she in their last moment had said to him: “We shall be as husband and wife whom a duty higher than happiness keeps each in his own land.”
Every day or two, at the pleasure of ocean mails, there comes a letter, bearing him fresh assurance of her love. But writ in fear of the censor’s eye, it gives no hint of what she does, no whisper of what may be her danger. Of that he can only guess. And after each such letter he strains to peer beyond time’s curtain. After each such letter a hope that will not die breathes daringly in the ear of his heart that to him may yet be granted the fulness of bliss—that Freedom may yet be won for Sonya’s people—that she may come to him!