Page:In the name of a woman (1900).djvu/134

 you for or against me? For Heaven's sake try to speak frankly! Nothing else will serve either you or me in this." And she stamped her foot with a gesture of impatience.

"So far as our aims are in common, I am with you."

"Do you think an answer like that will satisfy me? I am beginning to understand you; and if my reading is right, you and those with you may well take heed for yourselves."

"If you have come to threaten me" I began, when she broke in:

"I have not come to threaten. I have come to have a clear understanding; that is all. And I will have it," she said, impetuously. "I will give you another chance. What did the Prince say to you when you were with him?"

"I do not know there was anything"

"For the love of Heaven, man, drop this conventional cant and speak as plainly as you can if you wish. What did he say to you about this mad intention of his to abdicate?"

"Intention to abdicate?" I echoed, as if taken by surprise.

"Which means that he did tell you, and you would now pretend that he did not." And, yielding to a sudden storm of passion, she broke out into a torrent of indignant reproaches of what she termed my breach of trust in not telling her.

I did not interrupt her, and gathered that she had only just heard from the Prince what he had said to me. I understood now the cause of her visit and the reason of her passion.

"As his Highness told me in confidence, I could not betray it," I said as soon as I could get a word in.