"What am I to do about you?" he went on, apparently addressing the blade of grass he was staring at. "I can't leave you as matters stand."
"Please, you are not responsible for me, are you?" And tried to laugh, but scarcely smiled.
"I want to be," he muttered. "I desire to be entirely----"
"Thank you. You have been more than kind. And very soon I hope I shall be on happy terms with my own Government again. Then your solicitude should cease."
"If your Government listens to reason----"
"Then I also could go to France!" she interrupted. "Merely to think of it excites me beyond words!"
"How can you ask that! If you had been a disgraced exile as I have been, as I still am--and falsely accused of shameful things--annoyed, hounded, blackmailed, offered bribes, constantly importuned to become what I am not--a traitor to my own people--would you not be wildly happy to be proven innocent? Would you not be madly impatient to return and prove your devotion to your own land?"
"Of course you understand. Do you imagine that I, a French girl, would have remained here in shameful security if I could have gone back to France and helped? I would have done anything--anything, I tell you--scrubbed the floors of hospitals, worked my fingers to the bone----"
"I'll wait till you go," he said.... "They'll clear your record very soon, I expect. I'll wait. And we'll go together. Shall we, Thessa?"
But she had not seemed to hear him; her dark eyes grew remote, her gaze swept the sapphire distance. It was his hand laid lightly over hers that aroused her, and she withdrew her fingers with a frown of remonstrance.
"Won't you let me speak?" he said. "Won't you let me tell you what my heart tells me?"
"I don't desire to hear yet--I don't know where my own heart--or even my mind is--or what I think about--anything. Please be reasonable." She stole a look at him to see how he was taking it, and there was concern enough in her glance to give him a certain amount of hope had he noticed it.
"You like me, Thessa, don't you?" he urged.
"Have I not admitted it? Do you know that you are becoming a serious responsibility to me? You worry me, too! You are like a boy with all your emotions reflected on your features and every thought perfectly unconcealed and every impulse followed by unconsidered behaviour.