The life of this man, who was meant when the great ones of the earth now referred to Germany, had been in hourly peril for months past. Now it was safe. She had not bent one's will, ineffectually, to the effort of restraining another's. One had not kept watch and put in one's word for nothing, remembering the debt one owed to that powerful ruthless hand. Not unheard had one prayed in an anguish of supplication that the woman loved beyond all Ideals, however heroic and overwhelming, might be saved from the fate of occupying a red-stained niche in History.
"Marry her promptly!"
He repeated the words, with the flicker of a laugh playing in his eyes and about his heavy facial muscles. His tortured victim, blood-red to his cropped scalp, groaned out:
"She is married already, Sir!"
"Quatsch!" said the Minister, laughing: "Married she is not. Oh, she has been married as the American canvasback ducks are roasted. She has been carried on a dish through the kitchen of matrimony, and taken out at the opposite door."
"But—my God, sir!—I have seen her husband!" cried the young man desperately.
"When did you see him?" asked the resonant, compelling accents. The answer came, bringing down his frown.
"I—cannot tell you!"
Came, curiously lisped, the words:
"I fear I must compel you. All this may lead to something more serious than I have thought...."