Police
Oracle turned missionary under the nose of the most cunning criminal
in France and the vainest. Of course Buckhurst's contempt for me at
once passed all bounds, and, secure in that contempt, he felt it
scarcely worth while to use his favorite weapon--persuasion. Still, if
the occasion should require it, he was quite ready, I knew, to loose
his eloquence on the Countess, and on me too.

The Countess turned her troubled eyes to me.

"What I have seen, what I have thought since yesterday has distressed
me dreadfully," she said. "I have tried to include all the world in a
broader pity, a broader, higher, and less selfish love than the
jealous, single-minded love for one country--"

"The mother-land," I said, and Buckhurst looked up, adding, "The
world is the true mother-land."

Whereupon I appeared profoundly impressed at such a novel and
epigrammatic view.

"There is much to be argued on both sides," said the young Countess,
"but I am utterly unfitted to struggle with this new code of ethics.
If it had been different--if I had been born among the poor, in
misery!--But you see I come a pilgrim among the proletariat, clothed
in conservatism, cloaked with tradition, and if at heart I burn with
sorrow for the miserable, and if I gladly give what I have to help, I
cannot with a single gesture throw off those inherited garments,
though they tortured my body like the garment of Nessus."

I did not smile or respect her less for the stilted phrases, the
pathetic poverty of metaphor. Profoundly troubled, struggling with a
reserve the borders of which she strove so bravely to cross, her
distress touched me the more because I knew it aroused the uneasy
contempt of Buckhurst. Yet I could not spare her.

"You saw the cuirassiers die in the street below," I repeated, with
the obstinacy of a limited intellect.

"Yes--and my heart went out to them," she replied, with an emphasis
that pleased me and startled Buckhurst.

Buckhurst began to speak, but I cut him short.

"Then, madame, if your heart went out to the soldiers of France, it
went out to France, too!"

"Yes--to France," she repeated, and I saw her lip begin to quiver.

"Wherein does love for France conflict with our creed, madame?" asked
Buckhurst, gently. "It is only hate that we abjure."

She turned her gray eyes on him. "I will tell you: in that dreadful
moment when the cavalry of France cheered Death in his own awful
presence, I loved them and their coun