Page:MacGrath--The drums of jeopardy.djvu/197

Rh that I am fit to go on. So my identity is known to you?"—dejectedly.

"Yes. You wish me to forget what I know?"

"Will you?"—eagerly. "Will you forget that I am anything but a naked, friendless human being?"

"Yes. But your enemies know."

"I rather fancy they will keep the truth to themselves. Let them publish my identity, and a hundred havens would be offered. Your Government would protect me."

"It is doing so now, indirectly. But why do you not want it known?"

"Freedom! Would I have it if known? Could I trust anybody? Would it not be essentially the old life in a new land? I want a new life in a new land. I want to be born again. I want to be what you patently are, an American. That is why I risked life a hundred times in coming all these miles, why I sit in this chair before you, with the room rocking because they battered in my head. I do not offer a human wreck, an illiterate mind, in exchange for citizenship. I bring a tolerably decent manhood. Try me! Always I have admired you people. Always we Russians have. But there is no Russia now—that I can ever return to!" Hawksley's head drooped again and his bloodshot eyes closed. Cutty sensed confusion, indecision; all his deductions were upset in the face of this strange appeal. Russian, born of an Italian mother and speaking