“If he does, I shall not forget that I am a Leigh, and that my lover is the handsomest, bravest soldier that ever drew sword,” she said, making me blush again. Then she passed suddenly to my affair. “But you have been talking altogether of us and our safety, Dick, and I am much more concerned for yours. I know now that you are a true man and no traitor, and the knowledge makes me shiver and cringe for every passing moment: you’ll be taken--and--I shall not be here. Oh, Dick! when will it be over? How long must you stay here under the shadow of that dreadful thing on Gallows Hill?” “It will be over--to-night,” I prophesied, comforting her as I could. “But you do not say that you will escape!” she returned, her quick intuition penetrating behind the masking words. “No; I can not say that, Beatrix. The thing I am pledged to do is a most desperate thing: and the promise of success is not great. Yet, as I say, it will be over to-night.” “Dick,” she said, coming close again, “what is this mission of yours that puts your life in jeopardy every hour, that has made you lay aside your dignity as an officer, that has been great enough to bring you here as a deserter and to take a service, every step in which must be a wretched lie? We may well be parting for the last time in our two lives, Dick, dear: don’t deny me this time.” If she had not said that word about the parting--a word which was all too likely to be true--I think I might still have withstood her. But that one word broke down the barrier of my resolve, and so, flinging my soldier promise to Mr. Hamilton to the winds, I told her all, in tones that grew more and more the tones of shame when I realized what it meant to spread the harsh, brutal, military necessity of the kidnapping plan upon the tables of a pure woman’s mind and heart. She heard me through without interruption, sitting, as she had sat that other night, gazing steadfastly into the heart of the embers on the hearthstone. But when I had made an end, she began to speak in a low voice, never letting her eyes meet mine. “I do not at all understand these things, Dick: no woman ever can, I fear. We are taught at our mother’s knees that a lie is wrong; a thing to shudder at, to turn away from in loathing. We are taught that the finest things in those we love are truth and honor, and that the finest of all is the high honor’s honor that rises above the most binding necessity, or seeming necessity, that can constrain us. Yet you tell me that all this must go down at the bidding of a thing called military duty; that one must lie, cheat, steal, swear false oaths--” “No,” I interposed. “By some curious oversight I have not yet been required to take the oath of allegiance to King George.” She put the excuse aside with a little gesture of patient weariness.