"Yes—a bitter one."
"And if I were a spy, trying to escape from England—trying to escape—death—you would refuse to help me?"
She had turned entirely toward him on the seat beside him; her child-like hands clasped on the robe over her knees, her child-like face, pale, sweet, wistful, turned to his.
"Would you abandon me?" she asked.
"The situation is impossible——"
"Yes, but tell me."
"I don't care to think of such a——"
"Please answer me. Is your partisanship so bitter that you would wash your hands of me—let me go to my death?—go to your own, too, rather than help me?"
"Miss Girard, you are losing your composure——"
"No; I am perfectly composed. But I should like to know what you would do under such circumstances with a girl nineteen years old who stood in danger of death."