She made no verbal response, but looked at him with quickening interest, her dark eyes glowing, the breath coming quickly from between her parted lips. Matheson caught her wrist and held it firmly while he talked. "What will it benefit you," he asked, "to hoist your flag over the body of your brother, and the bodies of the sons and husbands of women who think with you? Life is too good a thing to spill it wantonly at the feet of a bloodless ideal. And you are too good and fine and gentle to waste your life in hate." "Not hate," she corrected, the hot tears welling afresh. "Patriotism is not hate. Aren't you ready to spill your blood for your country?" "You've got me there," he said, and smiled. "I'm going to defend this country from German avidity, anyhow." "Ah!" she cried. "You preach against hate, yet you hate the Germans. That isn't consistent. You do hate the Germans?" "Yes," he admitted; "I suppose that's true. But I never hated a German before their bestial ravishment of Belgium. I never imagined anything so brutal could defame the prestige of a great nation. They will never live that down. The things they've done... And the spying and underhand work... Yes, I hate them all right." "You hate Heinrich," she persisted. "I hate the things he has done." "I know," she said. "But what he has done, he has done for me. Always, when I was still a child, he loved me. Can you wonder that I feel grateful to him? I am sorry you hate him. I don't want harm to come to him through you... not through you. Promise me that you will go away and never seek to harm him in the future... Promise me that--for my sake." Had Matheson not already realised that the punishment of Holman was no longer work for him he must have yielded to the earnest entreaty in Honor's voice and eyes, as with nervous insistence she urged her request that he would spare her husband; but her pleading stabbed him, and excited afresh his enmity towards the man. "There is no need to wring promises from me," he said, a hardness he could not prevent steeling his voice. "The fact that he is your husband is sufficient. Had I known that sooner I should not be here now. As it is, more harm has come to me than to him. It was not compassion on his side that prevented him from murdering me." "He was desperate," she pleaded; "he feared you. He fears you still." "Perhaps," he exclaimed with angry suspicion, "he sent you to intercede for him?" "No," she cried quickly--"not that I came because--because--" Her voice broke on a sob. "You are so hard," she said. "I cannot touch you. Have you no pity--for me?" "Pity!--for you?" he cried, and raised himself sharply in the bed. "My God! I love you, and you know it... What need have you to ask for pity? Rather should your compassion go out to me. I give everything... and take nothing away with me--nothing."