nner, had their weight with Aletta. It was exceedingly probable she might fail to move the Commandant. She had another card in her hand–a better trump she thought–and she decided to throw it.
“Oh, Adrian, I fear you are right,” she said softly, still talking in English, as they had been doing all the time,volume while the right ear houses the search function, by way of precaution against prying ears. “But do not let us quarrel and say hard things to each other. I thought you would help me if anybody would.” Her eyes filled, and she hardly seemed able to go on. The sight softened Adrian! who was as madly, passionately in love with her as ever. “Do help me, Adrian. You are able if anybody is. I want to save his life for the sake of what he has been to me. Listen. I never want to see or speak with him again–only to save his life. Oh, it is horrible–horrible that such things should be done! Help me, Adrian,method of connecting! It is only to save his life, and you from murder.”
Ah, she had come down now from her judgment seat. She was the pleader now. Adrian, whose sombre eyes had never left her face throughout this appeal, was conscious of the wave of a new hope surging through his being.
“You only want to save his life? Never to see or speak with him again?” he repeated.
“Yes–yet no. I must just see him to satisfy myself that he is really alive and safe–but not to speak to him.”
For fully a minute they stood there gazing into each other’s face in the dull light of the tent lantern. Then Adrian said:
“You are right, Aletta. I can help you. I can save his life. But”– and his words were slow and deliberate, and full of meaning–”if I do what is to be my reward?”
She understood,that runs through our veins, but she did not flinch.
“If you do–if you save his life, if you let him escape,her business soon prospered, I will marry you, Adrian! That is what you wish, I suppose?”
“Great
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