I said gravely: "If, in your self-dedication to this work there be no ulterior motive;—if you undertake this unselfishly, and with a heart clean of all personal ambition—then, Thusis, I say, go on! ... And I am at your service."
Twice she started to speak, and hesitated. In her clear eyes, so intently, almost painfully fixed on mine, I saw she was fiercely pondering my words. Her intense and youthful seriousness in her concentration held me fascinated. And for a little while neither one of us stirred.
And it gradually began to appear to me that what I had said to her had suddenly opened to her young and ardent eyes a totally new view of some things in the world with which she had, perhaps, believed herself thoroughly familiar.
She turned from her absorption; and now she was presented to me in profile with downcast eyes and bitten lip, and a least relaxation of her slender figure which had been so straight and rigid.
It was becoming evident that she had nothing further to say to me,—no reply to make to what I had rather ponderously propounded as an ethical axiom.
But, as responding to the restless pressure, I released her hands, she turned back and stood looking at me out of painfully perplexed eyes—eyes that lacked no courage, either, yet doubted, now, almost wistfully.
Then, not speaking, she unlocked my door and went out.
Smith knocked at the doorway communicating between our apartments, and came in at my absent-minded invitation.
"Of course you're not in this, are you, Michael?" he inquired.
"We weren't asked. Besides, there are too many men now, and the Queen wants Thusis, Clelia, and Josephine Vannis to serve dinner in costume and join the party afterward."