Clelia answered, her eyes still fixed on Smith:
"I gave it to him from the first--even when I thought him a pious dolt.
And was ashamed. And now that I know him for a man I'm not ashamed. Let
him know it. I do care for him."
Smith stood rigid. Thusis, looking intently at Clelia, went to her and
passed one arm around her waist.
"This can't be," she said. Clelia laughed. "But it _is_, sister. It
isn't orthodox, it isn't credible, it is quite unthinkable that I should
care for him. But I do; and I've told him so. Now he can ruin us if he
wishes." And she flung a sweet, fearless glance at Smith which made him
tremble very slightly.
Thusis turned to me an almost frightened face as though in appeal, then
she caught her sister's hands.
"Listen!" she cried, "I also gave my heart as you gave yours, sister! I
couldn't help it. I found myself in love--" She looked at me--"I was
doomed to love him.
"But for God's sake listen, sister. It is my _heart_ I give. My mind
and my destiny remain my own."
"My destiny is in God's hands," said Clelia simply. "My mind and heart
I give--" She looked at Smith--"and all else that is myself ... if you
want me, Shan."
"You cannot do it!" exclaimed Thusis in a voice strangled with emotion.
"You can do it no more than can I! You have no more right than have I
to give yourself merely because you care! Your heart--yes! There is no
choice when love comes; you can not avoid it. But you can proudly
choose what to do about it!"
"I have chosen," said Clelia, "if he wants me."
Thusis clenched her hands and stood there twisting them, dumb, excited,
laboring evidently under the most intense emotion.
And what all this business was about I had not the remotest notion.
Suddenly Thusis turned fiercely on her sister with a gesture that left
her outflung arm rigid.
"Do you wish to find the irresponsible political level of those two
Bolsheviki in there?" she said with breathless passion. "Are you really
the iconoclast you say you are? I did not believe it! I can't. The
world moves only through decent procedure, or it disintegrates. Where
is your reason, your logic, your pride?"
"Pride?" Clelia smiled and looked at Smith: "In him, I think.... Since
he has become my master."
"He is not our master!" retorted Thusis. "If what we came here to do is
now impossible--thanks to a meddling and misled gentleman in Rome--is
there not a sharper blow to strike at this treacherous Greek King and
his Prussian wife and that vile, Imperial Hun who pulls the strings that
move them?"