his; and each moment brought the clearer conviction
that there was more to know and see.

"This is unlike you, Fulvia," he said. "You cannot make such a request
on impulse. You must have a reason."

She smiled. "You told me once that a woman's reasons are only impulses
in men's clothes."

But he was not to be diverted by this thrust. "I shall think so now," he
said, "unless you can give me some better account of yours!"

She was silent, and he pressed on with a persistency for which he
himself could hardly account: "You must have a reason for this request."

"I have one," she said, dropping her attempts at evasion.

"And it is--?"

She paused again, with a look of appeal against which he had to stiffen
himself.

"I do not believe the time has come," she said at length.

"You think the people are not ready for the constitution?"

She answered with an effort: "I think the people are not ready for it."

He fell silent, and they sat facing each other, but with eyes apart.

"You have received this impression from Gamba, from Andreoni--from the
members of our party?" he asked.

She made no reply.

"Remember, Fulvia," he went on almost sternly, "that this is the end for
which we have worked together all these years--the end for which we
renounced each other and went forth in our youth, you to exile and I to
an unwilling sovereignty. It was because we loved this cause better than
ourselves that we had strength to give up for it our personal hopes of
happiness. If we betray the cause from any merely personal motive we
shall have fallen below our earlier selves." He waited again, but she
was still silent. "Can you swear to me," he went on, "that no such
motive influences you now? That you honestly believe we have been
deceived and mistaken? That our years of faith and labour have been
wasted, and that, if mankind is to be helped, it is to be in other ways
and by other efforts than ours?"

He stood before her accusingly, almost, the passion of the long fight
surging up in him as he felt the weapon drop from his hand.

Fulvia had sat motionless under his appeal; but as he paused she rose
with an impulsive gesture. "Oh, why do you torment me with questions?"
she cried, half-sobbing. "I venture to counsel a delay, and you arraign
me as though I stood at the day of judgment!"

"It IS our day of judgment," he retorted. "It is the day on which life
confronts us with our own actions, and we must justify them or own