to--to eliminate you.
Perhaps you will understand now my difficulties in keeping you
unscathed."

"My death would have relieved you of that responsibility. It would have
been so easy to have let me die----"

"I could not!" He bent his head over his folded arms. "I could not," he
repeated. And then, after a silence, "Countess Strahni, I beg that you
will consider that I have succeeded so far in saving you from personal
danger."

"And yet you used me as a shield to save yourself from the bullets of
the man you killed----" She broke off, laughing bitterly.

"He would not fire. I knew it. He was a fool to give me the chance. I
took it. There was nothing else----"

"It was murder. And you----"

She glanced at him once and then turning away, hid her head in her arm.
"O God!" she whispered, as though to herself. "How I loathe you!"

Though the words were not even meant for him to hear, he did not miss
them.

"That is your privilege," he said after a moment, "and mine--to--to
adore you," he said in deep accents.

Slowly she lowered her hands and gazed at him with eyes that though they
looked, seemed to see not.

"You--_you_--! You care for _me_!" She dropped her hands to her sides,
and then with a voice that sought steadiness in its contempt, "What
object has the Fatherland to gain by this new hypocrisy, Herr Goritz?"

He stood stock still, making no effort to approach her.

"I think you do me some injustice," he said.

"Injustice!" she said coldly. "_I_ do _you_ injustice? I think you
forget."

"If you will permit--it is only fair at least that you should listen.
Even if what I say does not interest you."

She waved a hand in a gesture of deprecation--but he went on rapidly in
spite of her protest, with an air of pride, which somehow robbed the
confession of its sincerity.

"Your words have been cruel, Countess, but the cruelest were those in
which you attribute the highest motive of my life to the baseness of
hypocrisy. I have done many wrongs, broken many oaths, sinned many
sins--in the interests of my country--the service of which has been the
only aim of my existence. I have been entrusted by the Emperor himself
with missions which would have tested the courage of any man, and I have
not failed. That is my pride--the glory of my manhood, for the means of
accomplishment no matter how unworthy, are unimportant compared with the
great mission of the Germanic race in the betterment of humanity."

"I fail