“Then you will have to ask him.”
“To be sure. But the government can hardly have assigned Captain Claiborne to special duty at Monsieur Chauvenet’s request. I swear to you that I’m as much in the dark as you are.”
“I’m quite sure an officer of the line would not be taken from his duties and sent into the country on any frivolous errand. But perhaps an Ambassador from a great power made the request,—perhaps, for example, it was Baron von Marhof.”
“Good Lord!”
Armitage laughed aloud.
“I beg your pardon! I really beg your pardon! But is the Ambassador looking for me?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Armitage. You forget that I’m only a traitor and not a spy.”
“You are the noblest woman in the world,” he said boldly, and his heart leaped in him and he spoke on with a fierce haste. “You have made sacrifices for me that no woman ever made before for a man—for a man she did not know! And my life—whatever it is worth, every hour and second of it, I lay down before you, and it is yours to keep or throw away. I followed you half-way round the world and I shall follow you again and as long as I live. And to-morrow—or the day after—I shall justify these great kindnesses—this generous confidence; but to-night I have a work to do!”
As they stood on the verge of the defile, by the bridge that swung out from the cliff like a fairy structure, they heard far and faint the whistle and low rumble of the night train south-bound from Washington; and to both of them the sound urged the very real and practical world from which for a little time they had stolen away.
“I must go back,” said Shirley, and turned to the bridge and put her hand on its slight iron frame; but he seized her wrists and held them tight.