Odo was silent.  She had found the unanswerable word.  Yes, he was called on to acquit the accumulated debt of that long unrighteous rule:  it was he who must pay, if need be with the last drop of his blood, for the savage victories of Bracciaforte, the rapacity of Guidobaldo, the magnificence of Ascanio, the religious terrors and secret vices of the poor Duke now nearing his end.  All these passions had preyed on the people, on the tillers and weavers and vine-dressers, obscure servants of a wasteful greatness:  theirs had been the blood that renewed the exhausted veins of their rulers, through generation after generation of dumb labour and privation.  And the noblest passions, as well as the basest, had been nourished at the same cost.  Every flower in the ducal gardens, every picture on the palace walls, every honour in the ancient annals of the house, had been planted, paid for, fought for by the people.  With mute inconscient irony the two powers had faced each other for generations:  the subjects never guessing that their sovereigns were puppets of their own making, the Dukes that all their pomp and circumstance were but a borrowed motley.  Now the evil wrought in ignorance remained to be undone in the light of the world’s new knowledge:  the discovery of that universal brotherhood which Christ had long ago proclaimed, and which, after so many centuries, those who denied Christ were the first to put in practice.  Hour by hour, day by day, at the cost of every personal inclination, of all that endears life and ennobles failure, Odo must set himself to redeem the credit of his house.  He saw his way straight before him; but in that hour of insight his heart’s instinct of self-preservation made one last effort against fate.

He turned to Fulvia.

“You are right,” he said; “I have no choice.  You have shown me the way; but must I travel it alone?  You ask me to give up at a stroke all that makes life desirable:  to set forth, without a backward glance, on the very road that leads me farthest from you!  Yesterday I might have obeyed; but how can I turn today from this near view of my happiness?”

He paused a moment and she seemed about to answer; but he hurried on without giving her time.  “Fulvia, if you ask this sacrifice of me, is there none you will make in return?  If you bid me go forth and work for my people, will you not come with me and work for them too?” He stretched out his hands, in a gesture that seemed to sum up his infinite need of her, and for a moment they faced each other, silenced by the nearness of great issues.

She knew well enough what he offered.  According to the code of the day there was no dishonour in the offer and it did not occur to her to resent it.  But she looked at him sadly and he read her refusal in the look.

“The Regent’s mistress?” she said slowly.  “The key to the treasury, the back-door to preferment, the secret trafficker in titles and appointments?  That is what I should stand for—­and it is not to such services that you must even appear to owe your power.  I will not say that I have my own work to do; for the dearest service I could perform would be to help you in yours.  But to do this I must stand aside.  To be near you I must go from you.  To love you I must give you up.”