“You must return and explain,” she said. “I shall need more time, after all.” When he hesitated, she added: “There are plenty to watch that I do not escape. I could not, if I would. I have not the strength.”
“Time is passing,” he said gruffly, “and we get nowhere.”
“As soon as I can travel, I will come.”
“If madame wishes, I can take a letter.”
She pondered over that, interlacing her fingers nervously as she reflected.
“I will send no letter,” she decided, “but I will give you a message, which you can deliver.”
“Yes, madame.”
“Say to the Committee,” she began, and paused. She had thought and thought until her brain burned with thinking, but she had found no way out. And yet she could not at once bring herself to speech. But at last she said it: “Say to the Committee that I have reflected and that I will do what they ask. As far,” she added, “as lies in my power. I can only—”
“That is all the Committee expects,” he said civilly, and with a relief that was not lost on her. “With madame’s intelligence, to try is to succeed.”
Nevertheless, he left her well guarded. Even Minna, slipping off for an evening hour with a village sweetheart, was stealthily shadowed. Before this, fine ladies had changed garments with their maids and escaped from divers unpleasantnesses.