“I have one,” she said, dropping her attempts at evasion.

“And it is—?”

She paused again, with a look of appeal against which he had to stiffen himself.

“I do not believe the time has come,” she said at length.

“You think the people are not ready for the constitution?”

She answered with an effort:  “I think the people are not ready for it.”

He fell silent, and they sat facing each other, but with eyes apart.

“You have received this impression from Gamba, from Andreoni—­from the members of our party?” he asked.

She made no reply.

“Remember, Fulvia,” he went on almost sternly, “that this is the end for which we have worked together all these years—­the end for which we renounced each other and went forth in our youth, you to exile and I to an unwilling sovereignty.  It was because we loved this cause better than ourselves that we had strength to give up for it our personal hopes of happiness.  If we betray the cause from any merely personal motive we shall have fallen below our earlier selves.”  He waited again, but she was still silent.  “Can you swear to me,” he went on, “that no such motive influences you now?  That you honestly believe we have been deceived and mistaken?  That our years of faith and labour have been wasted, and that, if mankind is to be helped, it is to be in other ways and by other efforts than ours?”

He stood before her accusingly, almost, the passion of the long fight surging up in him as he felt the weapon drop from his hand.

Fulvia had sat motionless under his appeal; but as he paused she rose with an impulsive gesture.  “Oh, why do you torment me with questions?” she cried, half-sobbing.  “I venture to counsel a delay, and you arraign me as though I stood at the day of judgment!”

“It is our day of judgment,” he retorted.  “It is the day on which life confronts us with our own actions, and we must justify them or own ourselves deluded.”  He went up to her and caught her hands entreatingly.  “Fulvia,” he said, “I too have doubted, wavered—­and if you will give me one honest reason that is worthy of us both—­”

She broke from him to hide her weeping.  “Reasons! reasons!” she stammered.  “What does the heart know of reasons?  I ask a favour—­the first I ever asked of you—­and you answer it by haggling with me for reasons!”

Something in her voice and gesture was like a lightning-flash over a dark landscape.  In an instant he saw the pit at his feet.

“Some one has been with you.  Those words were not yours,” he cried.

She rallied instantly.  “That is a pretext for not heeding them!” she returned.

The lightning glared again.  He stepped close and faced her.

“The Duchess has been here,” he said.

She dropped into a chair and hid her face from him.  A wave of anger mounted from his heart, choking back his words and filling his brain with its fumes.  But as it subsided he felt himself suddenly cool, firm, attempered.  There could be no wavering, no self-questioning now.