Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/471

460 back against the door; her face was white. "If you do this—I can never look upon you as an honorable man again."

He bit his lip angrily and then spoke with repressed anger,—

"Then I must make even that sacrifice. If I did not go to warn those men of this crime against them that is being secretly prepared—where would my honor be?—the men in whose cause I believe, whose counsels I have shared! The one dishonorable thing that I could do to-night, Lydia, would be to stay at home with you."

"Stewart," she said inflexibly, "if you go, I shall despise you all my life."

"Better so than that I should despise myself," he answered hotly. "Assassins on the way—and I not warn the victims! Lydia! you certainly do not mean to hold the door against me!"

She stood a moment, while with his hands in his pockets he waited, looking at her.

"No, Stewart; no," she said; she stepped aside and opened the door. "I'll hold it open for you—and the Stewart that I knew and loved goes out—never to return."

"Ah," he answered, as he passed out, "you are melodramatic to-night."

He was too stirred by the importance of that which he was about to do to feel much discomfort over this parting from his wife. He strode away wishing that she had not made such an unpleasant scene, but he did not tingle long with the memory. His mind turned eagerly to the preparation of the speech that was to awaken the men of New Rome. The dramatic opportunity to put before them this most important, unsuspected news elated him, thrilled him with a sense of power; this night it was his part to be these people's guide, and he would rouse them to such a pitch of righteous wrath as would sweep away forever the vile oppression under which they had suffered. At