It would have been hard enough to bear, difficult enough to explain away to others, if he had told her his reasons, however captious, unwise, or selfish they might be; but to have the door of his soul thus shut upon her, his thoughts thus closed to her, hurt her with intolerable pain, and filled her with a deep and burning indignation.
She passed all the early morning hours alone in her little temple of prayer, striving in vain against the bitterness of her heart; above her the great ivory Crucifixion, the work of Angermayer, beneath which so many generations of the women of the House of Szalras had knelt in their hours of tribulation or bereavement.
When she left the oratory she had conquered herself. Though she could not extinguish the human passions that smarted and throbbed within her, she knew her duty well enough to know that it must lie in submission and in silence.
She sought for him at once. She found him in the library: he was playing to himself a long dreamy concerto of Schubert's, to soothe the irritation of his own nerves and pass away a time of keen suspense. He rose as she came into the room, and awaited her approach with a timid anxiety in his eyes, which she was too absorbed by her own emotions to observe. He had assumed a boldness that he had not, and had used his power to dominate her rather in desperation than in any sense of actual mastery. In his heart it was he who feared her.
'You were quite right,' she said simply to him. 'Of course, you are master of your own actions, and owe no account of them to me. We will say no more about it. For myself, you know I am content enough to escape exile to any embassy.'
He kissed her hand with an unfeigned reverence and humility.
'You are as merciful as you are great,' he murmured. 'If I be silent it is my misfortune.' He paused abruptly.
A sudden thought came over her as he spoke.
'It is some State secret that he knows and cannot speak of, and that has made him unwilling to go. Why did I never think of that before?'
An explanation that had its root in honour, a reticence that sprang from conscience, were so welcome to her, and to her appeared so natural, that they now consoled her at once, and healed the wounds to her own pride.