“My choice is made.  I have resigned my right to the succession.  I shall not return to Pianura.”

She continued to stare at him, leaning against the chair from which de Crucis had risen.

“Your choice is made!  Your choice is made!” she repeated.  “And you have chosen—­”

“You,” he said simply.  “Will you go to France with me, Fulvia?  Will you be my wife and work with me at a distance for the cause that, in Italy, we may not serve together?  I have never abandoned the aims your father taught me to strive for; they are dearer, more sacred to me than ever; but I cannot strive for them alone.  I must feel your hand in mine, I must know that your heart beats with mine, I must hear the voice of liberty speak to me in your voice—­” He broke off suddenly and went up to her.  “All this is nothing,” he said.  “I love you.  I cannot give you up.  That is all.”

For a moment, as he spoke, her face shone with an extraordinary light.  She looked at him intently, as one who seemed to gaze beyond and through him, at some mystic vision that his words evoked.  Then the brightness faded.

“The picture you draw is a beautiful one,” she said, speaking slowly, in sweet deliberate tones, “but it is not for me to look on.  What you said last is not true.  If you love me it is because we have thought the same thoughts, dreamed the same dream, heard the same voice—­in each other’s voices, perhaps, as you say, but none the less a real voice, apart from us and above us, and one which would speak to us as loudly if we were apart—­one which both of us must follow to the end.”

He gazed at her eagerly as she spoke; and while he gazed there came to him, perversely enough, a vision of the life he was renouncing, not as it concerned the public welfare but in its merely personal aspect:  a vision of the power, the luxury, the sumptuous background of traditional state and prerogative in which his artistic and intellectual tastes, as well as his easy impulses of benevolence, would find unchecked and immediate gratification.  It was the first time that he had been aware of such lurking influences under his most generous aspirations; but even as Fulvia ceased to speak the vision faded, leaving only an intenser longing to bend her will to his.

“You are right,” he rejoined; “we must follow that voice to the end; but why not together?  Your father himself often questioned whether the patriot could not serve his people better at a distance than in their midst.  In France, where the new ideas are not only tolerated but put in practice, we shall be able to study their effects and to learn how they may best be applied to the relief of our own unhappy people; and as a private person, independent of party and patronage, could I not do more than as the nominal head of a narrow priest-ridden government, where every act and word would be used by my enemies to injure me and the cause I represent?”

The vigour and rapidity of the attack, and the promptness with which he converted her argument to his own use, were not without visible effect.  Odo saw his words reflected in the wavering glow of Fulvia’s cheek; but almost at once she regained control of her pulses and faced him with that serenity which seemed to come to her at such moments.