“’Tis the best I have, Madam!” I colored, but her eye had not criticism, though her speech had mockery.

“This is the costume of your American savages,” she said.  “I find it among the most beautiful I have ever seen.  Only a man can wear it.  You wear it like a man.  I like you in it—­I have never liked you so well.  Betray you, Monsieur?  Why should I?  How could I?”

“That is true.  Why should you?  You are Helena von Ritz.  One of her breeding does not betray men or women.  Neither does she make any journeys of this sort without a purpose.”

“I had a purpose, when I started.  I changed it in mid-ocean.  Now, I was on my way to the Orient.”

“And had forgotten your report to Mr. Pakenham?” I shook my head.  “Madam, you are the guest of England.”

“I never denied that,” she said.  “I was that in Washington.  I was so in Montreal.  But I have never given pledge which left me other than free to go as I liked.  I have studied, that is true—­but I have not reported.”

“Have we not been fair with you, Baroness?  Has my chief not proved himself fair with you?”

“Yes,” she nodded.  “You have played the game fairly, that is true.”

“Then you will play it fair with us?  Come, I say you have still that chance to win the gratitude of a people.”

“I begin to understand you better, you Americans,” she said irrelevantly, as was sometimes her fancy.  “See my bed yonder.  It is that couch of husks of which Monsieur told me!  Here is the cabin of logs.  There is the fireplace.  Here is Helena von Ritz—­even as you told me once before she sometime might be.  And here on my wrists are the imprints of your fingers!  What does it mean, Monsieur?  Am I not an apt student?  See, I made up that little bed with my own hands!  I—­Why, see, I can cook!  What you once said to me lingered in my mind.  At first, it was matter only of curiosity.  Presently I began to see what was beneath your words, what fullness of life there might be even in poverty.  I said to myself, ’My God! were it not, after all, enough, this, if one be loved?’ So then, in spite of myself, without planning, I say, I began to understand.  I have seen about me here these savages—­savages who have walked thousands of miles in a pilgrimage—­for what?”

“For what, Madam?” I demanded.  “For what?  For a cabin!  For a bed of husks!  Was it then for the sake of ease, for the sake of selfishness?  Come, can you betray a people of whom you can say so much?”

“Ah, now you would try to tempt me from a trust which has been reposed in me!”

“Not in the least I would not have you break your word with Mr. Pakenham; but I know you are here on the same errand as myself.  You are to learn facts and report them to Mr. Pakenham—­as I am to Mr. Calhoun.”

“What does Monsieur suggest?” she asked me, with her little smile.

“Nothing, except that you take back all the facts—­and allow them to mediate.  Let them determine between the Old World and this New one—­you satin couch and this rude one you have learned to make.  Tell the truth only.  Choose, then, Madam!”