“Sometime,” she murmured, “I will tell you.”

“Whatever it was, Madam, you have been a brilliant woman, a power in affairs.  Yes, and an enigma, and to none more than to yourself.  You show that now.  You only loved what Elisabeth loved.  As woman, then, you were born for the first time, touched by that throb of her heart, not your own. `Twas mere accident I was there to feel that throb, as sweet as it was innocent.  You were not woman yet, you were but a child.  You had not then chosen.  You have yet to choose.  It was Love that you loved!  Perhaps, after all, it was America you loved.  You began to see, as you say, a wider and a sweeter world than you had known.”

She nodded now, endeavoring to smile.

“Gentilhomme!” I heard her murmur.

“So then I go on, Madam, and say we are the same.  I am the agent of one idea, you of another.  I ask you once more to choose.  I know how you will choose.”

She went on, musing to herself.  “Yes, there is a gulf between male and female, after all.  As though what he said could be true!  Listen!” She spoke up more sharply.  “If results came as you liked, what difference would the motives make?”

“How do you mean?”

“Only this, Monsieur, that I am not so lofty as you think.  I might do something.  If so, ’twould need to be through some motive wholly sufficient to myself.”

“Search, then, your own conscience.”

“I have one, after all!  It might say something to me, yes.”

“Once you said to me that the noblest thing in life was to pass on the torch of a great principle.”

“I lied!  I lied!” she cried, beating her hands together.  “I am a woman!  Look at me!”

She threw back her shoulders, standing straight and fearless.  God wot, she was a woman.  Curves and flame!  Yes, she was a woman.  White flesh and slumbering hair!  Yes, she was a woman.  Round flesh and the red-flecked purple scent arising!  Yes, she was a woman.  Torture of joy to hold in a man’s arms!  Yes, she was a woman!

“How, then, could I believe”—­she laid a hand upon her bosom—­“how, then, could I believe that principle was more than life?  It is for you, a man, to believe that.  Yet even you will not.  You leave it to me, and I answer that I will not!  What I did I did, and I bargain with none over that now.  I pay my wagers.  I make my own reasons, too.  If I do anything for the sake of this country, it will not be through altruism, not through love of principle!  ’Twill be because I am a woman.  Yes, once I was a girl.  Once I was born.  Once, even, I had a mother, and was loved!”

I could make no answer; but presently she changed again, swift as the sky when some cloud is swept away in a strong gust of wind.

“Come,” she said, “I will bargain with you, after all!”

“Any bargain you like, Madam.”

“And I will keep my bargain.  You know that I will.”