“But we can not keep on, my dear Sir,” she said to him slowly.  “That is why I have sent for you.”

“How do you mean?  What’s wrong?  Can not keep on—­end our work?  You’re jesting!”

“No, it is the truth.  Kossuth is in Turkey.  Shall I join him there?  Where shall I go?  I’m an exile from France.  I dare not return to Hungary.”

“You—­I’ll—­I’ll not believe it!  What do you mean?”

“I am ruined financially, that’s all.  My funds are at an end.  My estates are gone!  My agent tells me he can send me no more money.  How much do you think,” she said, with a little moue, “we can do in the way of deporting blacks out of my earnings—­well, say as teacher of music, or of French?”

“I’ll not believe it—­you—­why, you’ve been used to riches, luxuries, all your life!  And I—­why, I’ve helped impoverish you!  I’ve been spending your money.  A ship-load of blacks, against you?  My God!  I’d have cut my hand off rather.”

She showed him the correspondence, proof of all that she had said, and he read with a face haggard in unhappiness.’

“There’ There!” she said.  “You’ve not heard me make any outcry yet, have you?  Why should you, then?  I have seen men lay down their lives for a principle, a belief.  You will see that again.  Should not a woman lay down her money?

“But as to that,” she went on lightly, “why, there are many things one might do.  I might make a rich alliance, don’t you think?”

He suddenly stiffened and straightened, and looked her full in the eye, a slow flush coming across his face.

“I couldn’t have said it any time before this,” said he.  “It has been in my heart all along, but I didn’t dare—­not then.  Yes, a rich alliance if you liked, I do not doubt.  There’s a poor one waiting for you, any time you like.  You know that.  You must have seen it, a thousand times—­”

She advanced to him easily and held out both her hands.  “Now, now!” she said.  “Don’t begin that.  You’ll only hurt us both.  My lieutenant, visionary as myself!  Ah, we’ve failed.”

“But everybody will blame you—­you will have no place to go—­it will be horrible—­you don’t begin to know what it means.  Of course, we have made mistakes.”

“Then let’s not make the worst mistake of all,” she said.

“But we could do so much—­”

She turned upon him suddenly, pale, excited.  “Do not!” she cried.  “Do not use those words!  It seems to me that that is what all men think and say.  ‘How much we could do—­together!’ Do not say that to me.”

At this he sobered.  “Then there is some one else?” he said slowly.  “You’ve heard some one else use those words?  I couldn’t blame him.  Well, I wish him happiness.  And I wish you happiness, too.  I had no right to presume.”