nie!" he said. He unclenched his hands, and slowly, very slowly,
took her quivering wrists. His eyes would have searched hers, but she
was looking at him no longer. Her head was bent. She was crying softly,
like a child that has been frightened.

"Stephanie!" he said again.

She made a little movement towards him, hesitated a moment, then went
close and hid her face against his breast.

"Oh, do make it easy for me!" she entreated brokenly. "Do--do try to
understand!"

His arms closed about her. He held her tensely against his heart, so
that she heard the wild tumult of its beating. But he said nothing
whatever. He waited for her still.

And so at last she found strength to turn her face a little upwards and
whisper his name.

"Pierre!" And then, with more assurance, "Pierre, it is true I haven't
much to offer you. But such as it is--such as it is--and you asked for
it once, remember--will you not take it?"

"Meaning?" he said again, and his voice was hoarse and low. It seemed to
come through closed lips.

"Meaning," she answered him quickly and passionately, "that
revolutionist as you have been, tyrant as you are, you have managed
somehow to bind me to you. Oh, I was a fool--a fool--not to marry you
long ago at Maritas even though I hated you. I might have known that you
would conquer me in the end."

"Has it come to that?" said Pierre, and there was a queer break in his
voice that might have been laughter. "And have you never asked yourself
what made me a revolutionist--and a tyrant?"

"Never," she murmured.

"Must I tell you?" he said. "Will you believe me if I do?"

She turned her face fully to him, no longer fearing to meet that
piercing scrutiny before which she had so often quailed. "Was it for my
sake?" she said.

He met her look with eyes that gleamed as steel gleams in red firelight.

"How else could I have saved you?" he said. "How else could I have been
in time?"

"Oh, but you should have told me!" she said. "You should have told me!"

"And if I had," said Pierre, "would you have hated me less? Do you hate
me the less now that you know it?"

She was silent.

"Tell me, Stephanie," he persisted.

Her eyes fell before his.

"Have I ever hated you?" she said, her voice very low.

"If I did not make you hate me last night," he said, "then you never
have."

"And I never shall," she supplemented under her breath.

"That," said Pierre, "is another matter. You forget that I am a
blackgu