," she replied.

"You spoke once of that other country, abroad,--" he broke off,
shaking his head. "Who are you? I don't feel sure that I even
know your name as yet."

"I am, as you have been told, Josephine, Countess St. Auban. I am
French, Hungarian, American, what you like, but nothing to you. I
came to this country in the interest of Louis Kossuth. For that
reason I have been misunderstood. They think me more dangerous
than I am, but it seems I am honored by the suspicions of Austria
and America as well. I was a revolutionist yonder. I am already
called an abolitionist here. Very well. The name makes little
difference. The work itself--"

"Is that how you happened to be there on the boat?"

"I suppose so. I was a prisoner there. I was less than a chattel.
I was a piece of property, to be staked, to be won or lost at
cards, to be kidnapped, hand-cuffed, handled like a slave, it
seems. And you've the hardihood to stand here and ask me who I am!"

"I've only that sort of hardihood, Madam, which makes me ride
straight. If I had observed the laws, I wouldn't have you here
now, this morning."

"You'll not have me long. If I despise you as a man without
chivalry, I still more do so because you've neither ambition nor
any sense of morals."

"You go on to improve me. I thank you, Mademoiselle--Eleazar was
right. I heard him. I like you as 'Mademoiselle.'"

"What difference?" she flared out. "We are opposed at all angles
of the human compass. There is no common meeting ground between
us. Let me go."

He looked at her full in the face, his own features softened,
relenting for a time, as though her appeal had touched either his
mental or his moral nature. Then slowly, as he saw the excellence
of her, standing there, his face dropped back into its iron mold.
"You are a wonderful woman," he said, "wonderful. You set me on
fire--and it's only eight o'clock in the morning. I could crush
you--I could tear you to pieces. I never saw your like, nor ever
shall. Let you go? Yes! When I'm willing to let my blood and
soul go. Not till then. If I were out in that graveyard, with my
bones apart, and your foot crossed my grave, I'd get up and come,
and live again with you--live--again. I say, I could live again,
do you hear me?"

She broke out into a torrent of hot speech. He did not seem to
hear her. "The wrong of it," said he, "is that we should fight
apart and not together. Do as you like