She listened to him very much as a prisoner at the bar might listen to a judge who reasons before he pronounces sentence, and her face became as the face of that prisoner might become, who detects some leniency of tone, some softening of manner, on the part of the arbiter of his fate.  She ceased to tremble, her lips relaxed, her eyes grew softer and softer.  She came a step nearer, resting her finger-tips upon a little table, her body leaning towards him.  He had a queer vision of her for a moment—­no longer the prophetess, a touch of the Delilah in the soft sweetness of her eyes.

“Oh, forgive me!” she begged.  “I was foolish.  Forgive me!”

He smiled at her reassuringly.

“There is nothing to forgive,” he insisted.  “You asked for an explanation to which you had a right.  I have tried to give it to you.  Indeed, Julia, you need have no fear.  Whatever I decide in life will be what I think best for our cause.”

The shadow of fear once more trembled in her tone.

“Whatever you decide,” she repeated.  “You will not—­you will not let them call you a deserter?  You couldn’t do that.”

“There isn’t anything in the world,” he told her quietly, “which has the power to tempt me from doing the thing which I think best.  I cannot promise that it will be always the thing which seems right to this committee of men,” he added, touching the envelope with his forefinger.  “I cannot promise you that, but it should not worry you.  You yourself are different.  It is my hope that soon you will understand me better.  I think that when that time comes you will cease to fear.”

The light in her face was wonderful.

“Oh, I want to!” she murmured.  “I want to understand you better.  There hasn’t been anything in life to me like the sound of your name, like the thought of you, since first I understood.  Perhaps I am as bad as Aaron,” she sighed.  “I, too, alas! am your hopeless slave.”

He moved a step nearer.  This time she made no effort to retreat.  Once more she was trembling a little, but her face was soft and sweet.  All the pallor, the hard lines, the suffering seemed to have passed miraculously out of it.  A soul—­a woman’s soul—­was shining at him out of her eyes.  It wasn’t her physical self that spoke—­in a way he knew that.  Yet she was calling to him, calling to him with all she possessed, calling to him as to her master.

He succeeded in persuading her to eat and drink, and she departed, a little grim and unpleased, in the motor car which Mr. Foley had insisted upon ordering round.  Then Maraton strolled into the garden to take his delayed coffee.  Elisabeth came noiselessly across the turf to his side.

“I hope there was nothing disturbing in your letters?” she said.

“Not very,” he replied.  “It is only what I expected.”

“Every one,” she continued, “has been admiring your secretary.  We all thought that she had such a beautiful face.”