“Too late!”
“To say that I am––in love with you.”
He flushed heavily and looked at her in a dazed way.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“I mean––if you want me––I am––am not afraid any more–––”
They had both risen instinctively, as though to face something vital. She said:
“Don’t ask me to submit to any degrading ceremony.... I love you enough.”
He said slowly: “Do you realise what you say? You are crazy! You and your socialist friends pretend to be fighting anarchy. You preach against Bolshevism! You warn the world that the Crimson Tide is rising. And every word you utter swells it! You are the anarchists yourselves! You are the Bolsheviki of the world! You come bringing disorder where there is order; you substitute unproven theory for proven practice!
“Like the hun, you come to impose your will on a world already content with its own God and its own belief! And that is autocracy; and autocracy is what you say you oppose!
“I tell you and your friends that it was not wolves that were pupped in the sand of the shaggy Prussian forests when the first Hohenzollern was dropped. It was swine! Swine were farrowed;––not even sanglier, but decadent domestic swine;––when Wilhelm and his degenerate litter came out to root up Europe! And they were the first real Bolsheviki!”