The woman bowed her head, like one imprisoned in a sand drift, not to be crossed in any direction, but closing in and weighing down.  She was in a pitfall, overpowered like Gratian had been, subjugated, soon to be put to the yoke and compelled to draw steadily the harrow of transcendental politics.  Her caprices, faults, fancies, duplicities, wiles, caresses, impudence, conquests and delights were but straws out of which some great diplomatist would draw supplies for his cattle.  It was humiliating to the superb creature, but logical.  She gnashed her teeth, but she was sure that her cajolery—­even her tears would be thrown away on this soldier-spy whom once she had jilted, and who at present surfeited himself with her defeat.

“It is a crime,” she moaned, “a dastardly crime that you require me to do.”

“Not your first!  You robbed us for your own private ends—­we want you to rob another for ours! you must not always be selfish.”

’But I had really repented—­”

“Pooh! you may repent of this fresh misdeed while you are about penance.  I have no objections to you becoming a good wife! it will be a novel sensation, and of nothing are you more fond!  Suppose you convince your husband that it is wicked to kill his fellow-men by the myriad—­that love of woman is better than glory—­decide him to go into a cottage by the Mediterranean with you, and—­sell us the invention.  We could put it to a righteous end; clear Africa of cannibals, that the merchants’ stores, and farms to raise produce to fill them, should replace cane-huts.  But I doubt you will succeed!”

“Never!” she exclaimed, afraid that her hopelessness would injure her, for she would be the creditor of this remorseless combination without any prospect of repaying them.  But all resistance was useless, she was convinced; she had to submit or she would be expunged from life.  She who had fancied herself so powerful was but the lowly, abject subaltern at the beck of a preponderating power of which she understood no more the details than the aim and principle.

“There is always a second course,” observed Von Sendlingen slowly.  “That weak, inexperienced, young Italian, who loves you passionately.”

“Antonino?”

“Antonino, yes; he carries the key to that coffer, and the key, too, of the private cipher in which the inventor records his discoveries.”

Shrinking away aghast, her blanched countenance expressed her wonder at this preternatural knowledge.  These master-spies knew everything, even under this roof, better than the wife!  This grim giant carried on an abominable craft with thorough insight.  That she could never emulate, for completeness was not her forte.  Oh, had she but been a virtuous woman—­an honorable wife, he had not dared assume to govern her! but when of a girl’s age, she had acted like a woman; when a wife she had acted like the dissolute and unwived; when a mother, she had disembarrassed herself of the token of her glory of maternity.  She was not fit to be anything but the instrument of such universal conspirators.  She whom the viscount had playfully called “Donna Juana!” had met the Statue of the Commander at last, and once grasped, she would no more be free.