She touched his arm. "I was talking of the Fatherland," she answered.

He had met this intensity of hers before. Her scorn was neither hot
nor cold, but electric. So often when words failed her, Peter fancied
himself lost in some superb wilderness... Her own gray tone was in the
room to-day--her gray eyes and black hair that made the shadows seem
gray; her face that no night could hide from him. Sometimes his glance
was held to her lips--as one turns to the firelight. Passion there--or
was it the higher thing, _compassion?_ There was bend and give to
the black cloth she wore, as to the inflections of her voice. She
could forget herself. That was the first and the inexhaustible charm.

It is true that she was very poor. This room which had become his
sanctuary in Warsaw was in a humble house of a common quarter. She
laughed at this, and at her many hours of work each day, for which the
return was meager. There was the sweetest pathos to him in her little
purse, and her pride in these matters was a thing of royalty.

"My father earned the right to be poor," she once said.

It seemed to him that her father was mentioned in the moments most
memorable... She was at the window now, her hand lifting the shade.
The light of the gray day shone through her fingers--a long, fragile
hand that trembled.

"Shall we walk somewhere, or must you go to your office, Peter?"

"I won't, just yet. Yes, let's go outside."