“You wish to go back?”
“Of course!”
“Why?”
“How can you ask that! If you had been a disgraced exile as I have been, as I still am—and falsely accused of shameful things—annoyed, hounded, blackmailed, offered bribes, constantly importuned to become what I am not—a traitor to my own people—would you not be wildly happy to be proven innocent? Would you not be madly impatient to return and prove your devotion to your own land?”
“I understand,” he said in a low voice.
“Of course you understand. Do you imagine that I, a French girl, would have remained here in shameful security if I could have gone back to France and helped? I would have done anything—anything, I tell you—scrubbed the floors of hospitals, worked my fingers to the bone——”
“I’ll wait till you go,” he said.... “They’ll clear your record very soon, I expect. I’ll wait. And we’ll go together. Shall we, Thessa?”
But she had not seemed to hear him; her dark eyes grew remote, her gaze swept the sapphire distance. It was his hand laid lightly over hers that aroused her, and she withdrew her fingers with a frown of remonstrance.
“Won’t you let me speak?” he said. “Won’t you let me tell you what my heart tells me?”
She shook her head slowly: