"But they'll kill you."
"Should I care to live?"
His manner was changed, the roughness was all gone, as after a storm the ocean is at rest, deep, quiet, fathomless. His eyes seemed to smile, and his voice was low and reverent.
"Perhaps I am wrong, but I should not live to see this country a vassal of Russia. My people at Lyonesse and I have always worked for England, and we all have a certain pride in working well. Set that aside, my life is not the weight in either scale of the Queen's judgment. Who will serve England best, Ulster or Brand, the traitor or—the rebel?"
"What if I refuse," said the Queen, proudly, "to treat you as a rebel? What if I, the Queen, share the guilt of rebellion with you, and place myself at the head of this revolt?"
"There will be civil war," Brand answered coldly, dispassionately, "the most terrible war in all the annals of the world."
From Margaret's neck there hung a cross of diamonds, a thing of pitiless white splendour. The Queen pressed the sharp stones of it against her forehead.
"You," she said, "are ready to die for England, and I—and I—and I have sold my body to this Alexander of Russia. Death would be such a little thing compared with that. If you give yourself up, and I give myself up, there'll be no civil war."
"There'll be no war," he answered thoughtfully. "No war if the people accept the shame of peace."
"They will think as we do," said the Queen. "The men like you, the women like me. The same blood runs in them—and they'd cry out for war." Margaret laughed nervously, and dropping the cross, bent forward, her elbows resting on her knees, her face in her hands. "To think for the people—to live for the people, I was drilled to that, to be married for the people with a thing that one could not touch with the end of a glove. Ugh!" She shivered. "For the people, and I hate them! Yes, hate them. I wouldn't mind dying for them, but to live for them like that is horrible!