"You see!" she exclaimed with bitter triumph. "That is too much to ask from you!" "I am a soldier," he said. "Then I would to God I had been born to so easy a profession!" She turned away, battling with the fierce, angry sobs that choked her. The next instant his arms were about her. There was no hope and no joy in his embrace. He held her as he might have done in the midst of shipwreck and before the approach of death. "Do you think it is easy to put before you the choice—knowing what you will choose?" he asked. "Knowing——?" she stammered. "You do not love me enough to stand by me." "That is not true!" She freed herself and took a step back, searching his face as though to find there an answer to some agonising doubt. "That is not true," she repeated breathlessly. He lifted his hand in stern warning. "Think, Nora! We stand, you and I, at the parting of the ways. Make your choice honestly—I shall not blame you. But once you have chosen, there must be no turning back. If you choose to follow me, it must be to the bitter end of your duty. You must curse my enemies and bless my friends. Otherwise there can be no peace and happiness between us. If you choose your country—and those others whom you love—you shall go to them. I shall keep you in my heart until I die, but I will never see you again." In spite of his strongest effort, his voice shook, and that one signal from the depths of his despair called forth the one and only answer of which her headlong, passionate nature was capable. She flung herself into his arms, clinging to him in a storm of grief and pity. "With God’s help, I will stand by you to the end, my husband!" For a long minute he held her to him, and then gradually he felt how her whole frame relaxed and her arms sank powerless to her side. He looked down into her face. It was very pale, and a faint, childlike smile of utter weariness hovered round the half-open lips. "I am so tired, Wolff," she said under her breath, "so tired!" Without answering, he bore her to the sofa and laid her with a clumsy tenderness among the cushions. But he did not speak again. For the moment the conflict was over; a truce had been called between them. Only his instinct knew it was no more than that. Thus he knelt down silently beside her, and with her hand still clasped in his watched over her as she slept. *CHAPTER XIV* *THE CODE OF HONOUR*