“Why, then, I share it,” she answered with a ringing voice of pride.  “I share it with you;” and she smiled through her tears and a glowing blush brightened upon her face.  She stood before him, erect and beautiful.  Through Wogan’s mind there tripped a procession of delicate ladies who would swoon gracefully at the sight of a pricked finger.

“That’s John Sobieski speaking,” he exclaimed, and with an emphasis of despair, “Poland’s King!  But I was mad!  Indeed, I blame myself.”

“Blame!” she cried passionately, her whole nature rising in revolt against the word.  “Are we to blame?  We are man and woman.  Who shall cast the stone?  Are you to blame for that you love me?  Who shall blame you?  Not I, who thank you from my heart.  Am I to blame?  What have we hearts for, then, if not to love?  I have a thought—­it may be very wrong.  I do not know.  I do not trouble to think—­that I should be much more to blame did I not love you too.  There’s the word spoken at the last,” and she lowered her head.

Even at that moment her gesture struck upon Wogan as strange.  It occurred to him that he had never before seen her drop her eyes from his.  He had an intuitive fancy that she would never do it but as a deliberate token of submission.  Nor was he wrong.  Her next words told him it was her white flag of surrender.

“I believe the spoken truth is best,” she said simply in a low voice which ever so slightly trembled.  “Unspoken and yet known by both of us, I think it would breed thoughts and humours we are best without.  Unspoken our eyes would question, each to other, at every meeting; there would be no health in our thoughts.  But here’s the truth out, and I am glad—­in whichever way you find its consequence.”

She stood before him with her head bent.  She made no movement save with her hands, which worked together slowly and gently.

“In whichever way—­I—?” repeated Wogan.

“Yes,” she answered.  “There is Bologna.  Say that Bologna is our goal.  I shall go with you to Bologna.  There is Venice and the sea.  Bid me go, then; hoist a poor scrap of a sail in an open boat.  I shall adventure over the wide seas with you.  What will you do?”

Wogan drew a long breath.  The magnitude of the submission paralysed him.  The picture which she evoked was one to blind him as with a glory of sunlight.  He remained silent for a while.  Then he said timidly,—­

“There is Ohlau.”

The girl shivered.  The name meant her father, her mother, their grief, the disgrace upon her home.  But she answered only with her question,—­

“What will you do?”

“You would lose a throne,” he said, and even while he spoke was aware that such a plea had not with her now the weight of thistledown.

“You would become the mock of Europe,—­you that are its wonder;” and he saw the corner of her lip curve in a smile of scorn.

“What will you do?” she asked, and he ceased to argue.  It was he who must decide; she willed it so.  He turned towards the door of the hut and opened it.  As he passed through, he heard her move behind, and looking over his shoulder, he saw that she leaned down upon the table and kissed the pistol which he had left loaded there.  He stepped out of the cabin and closed the door behind him.