'You have much to tell me, and I have much to hear,' she said, after a pause. 'You should have come to the monastery to be cured of your wounds. Why were you so mistrustful of our friendship?'
'Indeed,' she said gravely, 'we can honour brave men in the Tauern and in Idrac too. You are very brave. I do not know how to thank you for my people or for myself.'
'Pray do not speak so,' he said, in a very low voice. 'To see you again would be recompense for much worthier things than any I have done.'
'But you might have seen me long ago,' she said, with a certain nervousness new to her, 'had you only chosen to come to the Isle. I asked you twice.'
He looked at her with eyes of longing and pathetic appeal.
'Do not tempt me,' he murmured. 'If I yielded, and if you despised me----'
'How could I despise one who has so nobly saved the lives of my people?'
He spoke very low: he was silent a little while, then he said very softly:
'One evening, when we spoke together on the terrace at Hohenszalras, you leant your hand upon the ivy there. I plucked the leaf you touched; you did not see. I had the leaf with me all through the war. It was a talisman. It was like a holy thing. When your cousin's soldiers stripped me in their ambulance, they took it from me.'
His voice faltered. She listened and was moved to a profound emotion.
'I will give you something better,' she said very gravely. He did not ask her what she would give.
She looked away from him awhile, and her face flushed a little. She was thinking of what she would give him; a gift so great that the world would deem her mad to bestow it, and perhaps would deem him dishonoured to take it.
'How did you hear of these floods along the Danube?' she asked him, recovering her wonted composure.
'I read about them in telegrams in Paris,' he made answer. 'I had mustered courage to revisit my poor Paris; all I possess is there. Nothing has been injured; a shell burst quite close by but did not harm my apartments. I went to make arrangements for the sale of my collections, and on the second day that I arrived there I saw the news of the inundations of Idrac and the lower Danubian plains. I remembered the name of the town; I remembered it was yours. I remembered your saying once that where you had feudal rights you had feudal duties, so I came on the chance of being of service.'