"Yes, _then_--" emphasized Hazen in wavering but peremptory tones.

"He told me what had led to all this misery. That as yet this compact was
between us two, and us two only. That he had considered my youth, and in
speaking of me to the Chief had held back my name even while promising
my assistance. That he should continue to consider it, by keeping my name
in reserve till he had returned from his mission, and if that mission
failed, or succeeded too well, and he did not return, I might regard
myself as freed from the Cause, unless my enlarging nature led me to
attach myself to it of my own free will. That said, he went, and for a
year I lived under the dread of his return and all the obligations that
return would entail. Then came tidings of his death, tidings for which he
may not have been responsible, but which he never contradicted, and I
thought myself free--free to enjoy life, and the fortune that had so
unexpectedly come to me; free to love and, alas! free to marry. And that
is why," she pursued, in all the anguish of a dreadful retrospect, "I
recoiled in such horror and hung, a dead weight on your arm, when on
turning from the altar where we had just pledged ourselves to mutual love
and mutual life, I saw among the faces before me the changed but still
recognizable one of my brother, and beheld him make the fatal sign which
meant, 'You are wanted. Come at once.'"

"Wretch!" issued from the frenzied lips of the half-maddened bridegroom,
as his glance flashed on Hazen. "Had you no mercy? Have you no mercy now,
that you should torture her young, credulous soul with these fanciful
obligations; obligations which no human being has any right to impose
upon another, whatsoever the Cause, holy or unholy, he represents?"

"Mercy? It is the weakness of the easy soul. There is no ease here," he
cried, touching his breast with no gentle hand.

"Then you forget my money," suggested Georgian. "Can you expect mercy
from a man who sees a million just within his grasp? I know," she
acknowledged, as Hazen lifted that same ungentle hand in haughty protest,
"that it was not for himself. I do not think Alfred would disturb a fly
for his own comfort, but he would wreck a woman's hopes, a good man's
happiness for the Cause. He admitted as much to me, _and more_, in the
interview we held that afternoon at the St. Denis. I had to go to him at
once, and I had to employ subterfuge in order to do so," she went on in
rapid explanation,