ometimes fancy
that the more withdrawn one lives the more distinctly one hears the
outer noises."

"But why should you heed the outer noises? You have never done so
before."

"Perhaps I was wrong not to do so before. Perhaps I should have listened
sooner. Perhaps others have seen--understood--sooner than I--oh, the
thought is intolerable!"

She moved a pace or two away, and then, regaining the mastery of her
lips and eyes, turned to him with a show of calmness.

"Your heart was never in this charter--" she began.

"Fulvia!" he cried protestingly; but she lifted a silencing hand. "Ah, I
have seen it--I have felt it--but I was never willing to own that you
were right. My pride in you blinded me, I suppose. I could not bear to
dream any fate for you but the greatest. I saw you always leading
events, rather than waiting on them. But true greatness lies in the man,
not in his actions. Compromise, delay, renunciation--these may be as
heroic as conflict. A woman's vision is so narrow that I did not see
this at first. You have always told me that I looked only at one side of
the question; but I see the other side now--I see that you were right."

Odo stood silent. He had followed her with growing wonder. A volte-face
so little in keeping with her mental habits immediately struck him as a
feint; yet so strangely did it accord with his own secret reluctances
that these inclined him to let it pass unquestioned.

Some instinctive loyalty to his past checked the temptation. "I am not
sure that I understand you," he said slowly. "Have you lost faith in the
ideas we have worked for?"

She hesitated, and he saw the struggle beneath her surface calmness.
"No, no," she exclaimed quickly, "I have not lost faith in them--"

"In me, then?"

She smiled with a disarming sadness. "That would be so much simpler!"
she murmured.

"What do you mean, then?" he urged. "We must understand each other." He
paused, and measured his words out slowly. "Do you think it a mistake to
proclaim the constitution tomorrow?"

Again her face was full of shadowy contradictions. "I entreat you not to
proclaim it tomorrow," she said in a low voice.

Odo felt the blood drum in his ears. Was not this the word for which he
had waited? But still some deeper instinct held him back, warning him,
as it seemed, that to fall below his purpose at such a juncture was the
only measurable failure. He must know more before he yielded, see deeper
into her heart and