“And why not to you?  There is no one so true, no one I honor so much!  In my pride and ignorance I thought you were not the equal of these fine gentlemen who have abandoned their King and their country.  But I have learned to know you, and my own heart, and what I have thrown away!  I am not ashamed to say this—­to own to you that I love you.”  She threw back her head and looked at Calvert with eyes that shone with a sorrowful light.  “For you once told me that you loved me, and though I know I have lost that love, the memory that I once had it will stay with me and be my pride forever.”

“’Tis yours still, believe me,” said Calvert. “’Tis yours now and forever—­forever.”  He put his arm around her and drew her to him.  “Far or near I have loved you since the first day I saw you, but I never dreamed that you would come to care, and in my pride I swore I would never tell you of my love after that day in the garden at Azay.”

“I must have been mad, I think,” she said, wonderingly.  “Mad to have laughed at you—­mad to have thrown away your love.  Ah, I have learned since then!”

“’Tis like a miracle that you should have come to care for me,” said Calvert, his lips upon her dark hair.

“The hour you left me I knew that I loved you.  Oh, the agony of that knowledge and the thought that I would never see you again!  Even then my pride would not let me tell you—­I thought you would come again—­and then—­then when later you turned from me—­my heart broke, I think—­’twas quite numb—­I was neither sorry nor glad—­” She stopped again.

“Are you glad now, Adrienne?” asked Calvert, looking at her tenderly.

“Yes,” she said, quietly.

“And will you be content to leave this France of yours and come with me to America?  There is a home waiting for you there—­’tis not a splendid place like those you know, but only a country house that stands near the noblest and loveliest river of the land, upon whose banks peace and happiness dwell.”  As he spoke, grim sounds of tumult, cannonading, fierce cries, and hoarse commands came to them from the hot, crowded street below, but they did not heed them—­they were far away from that terrible, doomed city.  Words were scarcely needed—­they stood there soul to soul, alone in all the world, and happy.

“I am going back to that land of mine, where there is work for me to do.  Will you not go with me?  There is nothing more we can do here.  The last chance to save their Majesties is gone.  Will you leave this troubled, fated land and come with me to that other one, where I will make you forget the horrors, the sufferings you have endured in this—­where I swear I will make you happy?  Will you go to this America of mine?” he asked.

She gazed into the eyes she so loved and trusted with a glance as serene and true as their own.

“I will go,” she said.