"I won't answer anything. I won't tell you anything more.... Oh, can't you see?..." She broke out furiously: "I could kill them; I could see them tortured. I'd _laugh_ to see them tortured.... I love my country as well as you do, Potter Waite, and I hate them--but I can't tell.... I risked everything to warn you--" "Hildegarde," he said, stretching his arms out toward her, "was that why you came--was that all? Wasn't there anything else? Didn't you think about _me_?... I've waited for some word.... You know you've never doubted that I love you.... You've had time to think about that night, and to reason. You know I was right.... You can't be holding that up against me." Suddenly he was the old reckless, headstrong Potter, ruled by impulse, driven by desire. He crushed her into his arms and held her savagely while he kissed her cold cheeks, her lips, her brow. "You've come," he said, hoarsely, "and you've come for keeps.... You're mine. You know you're mine." She struggled like an entrapped wild thing; but her struggles were futile. All at once she became limp, flexible in his arms; her tense soul became limp, flexible; she had endured to her utmost, and the breaking-point was reached. "Hold me closer," she sobbed. "Oh, closer--closer...." "You came," he said, and then repeated it over and over again, as if he were suddenly face to face with a divine marvel. "You came." Then: "Has the time been hard for you? As it has for me?... If it had been you would have come sooner." He lifted her in his arms and held her as if she were a child, and a warm, sweet feeling of comfort and contentment covered her. She was happy with such happiness as she had never known. "Tell me," he said in her ear, "tell me that you love me. I want to hear you say it." "I love you," she said, obediently, and as she said it she realized that it was true, had been true, would always be true, as long as life should last. He laughed boyishly, joyously. "Shall we elope again? Or what shall we do?... You mustn't leave me long. How soon can you come to me forever?" Again the darkness descended upon her, the black noose fastened about her throat. How soon could she come to him forever? How soon? She laughed strangely, and answered him with silence, but in the leaden weight of that silence she was saying: "Never.... Never." "Put me down," she said, in a voice that compelled him to obey. When she stood facing him, her knees trembling, a look of such piteousness on her face as made him draw a great breath of solicitude, she looked into his eyes--looked with steadiness. "I can never come to you, Potter," she said. "Never." He laughed. "Don't joke, sweetheart. I can't bear that sort of joking now." "It's no--joke," she said, brokenly. "I--I never want to see you again. You must never try to see me.... Never speak of this. I--oh--I can never marry any man." "What?" he asked, sharply.