"I will vouch for M. Arensen. I will guarantee that he is a loyal Russian, and will remain so."
"Um——," pondered M. Isowsky. "Well, well—um—how can you be sure? How can you assure me?"
Right then and there Mme. Legat felt a sudden emotion, and knew what she was going to do—what she wanted to do—to dispel that tragic vision.
"I'll give you the assurance of a wife," she said. "I'll marry him!"
The Russian Ambassador was baffled—admitted it. He signed the papers that gave Arensen his freedom as a loyal Russian. The heroine herself relates the sequel:
"Like Tosca in the opera, I sped to him bearing freedom. I didn't have to tell him the whole story—not then. We found that our old acquaintance, begun at La Scala, had blossomed into love during our separation. So he did the proposing. We were married just an hour before the Lafayette sailed, bringing us to the United States."