Keep your honor; love me without conditions.

I--" She stumbled into the chair, covered her eyes and fell to weeping.
Fitzgerald, dumfounded and dismayed, looked down at the beautiful head.
He could fight angry words, tempests of wrath--but tears, a woman's tears, the tears of the woman he loved! "Madame," he said gently, "do you love me ?" No answer.
"Madame, for God's sake, do not weep! Do you love me?
If you love me--if you love me--" She sprang to her feet.

Once again she experienced that shiver; again her conscience stirred.
"I do not know," she said.

"But this I may say: your honor, which you hold above the price of a woman's love, will be the cause of bloodshed.
Mothers and wives and sisters will execrate your name, brave men will be sacrificed needlessly.

What are the Osians to you?
They are strangers.
You will do for them, and uselessly, what you refuse to do for the woman you profess to love.