"And that if I am killed," he went on bitterly, "you will welcome the termination of an impossible situation." Gloria gave an almost imperceptible shrug. "You keep harping on death," she protested, "surely you are not afraid?" He turned fiercely on her, but restrained his voice to a level tone. "From what you know of me," he asked, "am I the sort of man who is likely to be afraid?" "No," she admitted readily. "The night of the revolution you were heroism personified. Also I have heard of your exploit in Herr Krantz's wine-shop, and it--it sounded very typical of you." "Thank you," he said, meeting her gaze; and an instant later, he added: "There is no such thing as fear in the world for me." "Why?" she asked. He answered her question with a reckless bang on the table. "Because I have lived!" he cried. "If a bullet finds its way to my heart it will have warm lodging. I am a happy man, and my happiness stands high above the accidents of life and death. Eternity has no terrors but solitude, and for me there will never be such a thing as solitude again, because I have met my second self." A hand was stretched out towards the bell, but Trafford intercepted it, and the bell was swept off the table on to the floor. Gloria rose with flashing eyes. "I asked you here in a spirit of camaraderie," she said haughtily. "Because I owe much to you and am conscious of the debt, I risked angering Bernhardt and smirching my own fair name. But you abuse my confidence. You know, as I know, that the present is no time for love-making. And yet----" She stopped abruptly, for Trafford had risen, and, picking up the bell, he put it on the table before her. "Ring," he said. "Can I not trust you?" "No!" he retorted. "You gave me the right to love you, not by your promise to go through the ceremony of marriage with me, not by the fulfilment of that promise, but by a certain light that shone in your eyes for a few brief seconds in the chapel of the Neptunburg. I am exercising that right to-night." She drew in her breath sharply. "You said just now that I was heartless," she said. "That is the usual lover's lie," he retorted; "the reproach that is only justified by its manifest untruth. But I am a gentleman, as you vaguely surmise, and I will not persist in an attention which is unwelcome to you. I came to make an appeal. You have but to command, and I will leave without another word." "What is the appeal?" "Do you wish me to make it?" he countered. "You have said so much you had best go on." Trafford drew back the curtain of the mullioned window and gazed at the shining pageantry of the frosty skies. For a full minute he stood gazing, and then he dropped the tapestry and faced his royal hostess.