over these irreconcilable quarrels. It did not seem to
matter what happened to anybody else, provided only she and Michael were
together, out of risk, out of harm. Other lives might be precious, other
ideals and patriotisms might be at stake, but she wanted to be with him
and nothing else at all. No tie counted compared to that; there was but
one life given to man and woman, and now that her individual happiness,
the individual joy of her love, was at stake, she felt, even as Michael
had said, that nothing else mattered, that they would be right to
realise themselves at any cost.

She took his hands again.

"Listen to me, Michael," she said. "I can't bear any longer that these
horrors should keep rising up between us, and, while we are here in the
middle of it all, it can't be otherwise. I ask you, then, to come away
with me, to leave it all behind. It is not our quarrel. Already Hermann
has gone; I can't lose you too."

She looked up at him for a moment, and then quickly away again, for she
felt her case, which seemed to her just now so imperative, slipping away
from her in that glance she got of his eyes, that, for all the love that
burned there, were blank with astonishment. She must convince him; but
her own convictions were weak when she looked at him.

"Don't answer me yet," she said. "Hear what I have to say. Don't you
see that while we are like this we are lost to each other? And as you
yourself said just now, nothing matters in comparison to our love. I
want you to take me away, out of it all, so that we can find each other
again. These horrors thwart and warp us; they spoil the best thing that
the world holds for us. My patriotism is just as sound as yours, but
I throw it away to get you. Do the same, then. You can get out of your
service somehow. . . ."

And then her voice began to falter.

"If you loved me, you would do it," she said. "If--"

And then suddenly she found she could say no more at all. She had hoped
that when she stated these things she would convince him, and, behold,
all she had done was to shake her own convictions so that they fell
clattering round her like an unstable card-house. Desperately she looked
again at him, wondering if she had convinced him at all, and then again
she looked, wondering if she should see contempt in his eyes. After that
she stood still and silent, and her face flamed.

"Do you despise me, Michael?" she said.

He gave a little sigh of utter content.

"O