"I could go into politics!" cried Ste. Marie; but she shook her head,
smiling down upon him.

"No, not you, my dear. Politics least of all. You could be a soldier, if
you chose. You could fight as your father and your grandfather and the
others of your house have done. You could lead a forlorn hope in the
field. You could suffer and starve and go on fighting. You could die
splendidly, but--politics, no! That wants a tougher shell than you have.
And a soldier's wife! Of what use to him is she?"

Ste. Marie's face was very grave. He looked up to her, smiling.

"Do you set ambition before love, my Queen?" he asked, and she did not
answer him at once.

She looked into his eyes, and she was as grave as he.

"Is love all?" she said, at last. "Is love all? Ought one to think of
nothing but love when one is settling one's life forever? I wonder? I
look about me, Ste. Marie," she said, "and in the lives of my
friends--the people who seem to me to be most worth while, the people
who are making the world's history for good or ill--and it seems to me
that in their lives love has the second place--or the third. I wonder if
one has the right to set it first. There is, of course," she said, "the
merely domestic type of woman--the woman who has no thought and no
interest beyond her home. I am not that type of woman. Perhaps I wish I
were. Certainly they are the happiest. But I was brought up among--well,
among important people--men of my grandfather's kind. All my training
has been toward that life. Have I the right, I wonder, to give it all