"Having heard what you did--knowing, as you do, my secret--unwilling as I know you are, to betray me, what do you propose, Mr. Dubravnik?"
I replied deliberately.
"I have thought of joining the nihilists, but I have reconsidered the question as impracticable. Therefore, I have decided that you must leave Russia."
"I? Leave Russia? Ordered away by you?"
"Yes, princess."
She laughed wildly, and again this creature of impulse underwent one of her lightning changes of which I had seen so many evidences. She was indignant now, made so by offended pride, because of the affront my words had put upon her social status. She, a princess, high in place, to be ordered out of her own country by a man who was a stranger to her, was unprecedented.
"Do you think that I am a weak thing to be ordered about like that by a man whom I never met until last night? Beware, sir, lest you make me regret that the bullet did not do its work more effectively. I am a princess; I have wealth, power, influential friends; do not think that the czar would believe what you would say, when he heard the story that I could tell him."
I shrugged my shoulders carelessly. It was part of my purpose to anger her even to the point of madness, for in that way alone could I hope to draw her out to the point of revealing herself to me truly. And besides, I was again falling under that fascination which exerted such strange and compelling power over me.
"If I believed you to be sincere in what you say now, it would make my unfortunate duty much more simple," I said.
"Your duty! What is your duty? To betray a woman?"
"Precisely that."
"And you would do that? _You?_"
"If the alternative fails, yes."
Again she rose from the couch upon which she had relaxed. She came and stood quite near to me, and with infinite scorn, impossible to describe, she said slowly:
"I think our interview is at an end, Mr. Dubravnik, for there is evidently nothing to be gained by it. I much prefer to choose my friends among those whom you call a.s.sa.s.sins, than from frequenters of the palace--if the others are like you."
I rose also, and bowed coldly.
"As you will, princess," I said. "I promised to keep your secret twenty-four hours. You have still ten hours in which to do one of three things to obviate the necessity that is now upon me, of betraying you."
"Indeed!" haughtily.
"The easiest one will be for you to notify me of your intention to depart from the country. The second, quite as effective, was suggested by yourself last night when we talked of suicide. The third will perhaps prove more congenial than either of the others; you can have me murdered." I bowed, and started towards the door, but she barred the way before I could reach it.
"You shall not go!" she cried, extending her arms as if to bar the way against my exit, and again her speaking countenance betrayed the impulse within her. This time it was terror.
"No? Is your brother Ivan here to complete the work so badly begun, princess?" I purposely rendered my question insolently offensive.
For a moment she gazed at me in horror; then, with a sob in her throat, she stepped aside and pointed towards the door.
"Go," she said. "I should not have detained you." But as I was about to take her at her word she burst into a pa.s.sion of tears. At the same instant she leaped towards me, and seizing me with both hands, drew me back again to the middle of the floor.
"No--no--no--no!" she cried. "You shall not go! Don"t you know that you would be shot down at the door of my house, or at best before you had gone a hundred feet away from it? Have you forgotten that your appointment with me to-day was known by those who have decided upon your death? Will you force me to acquiesce in your murder, even though you believe me capable of committing it?"
I knew that what she said was undoubtedly true, for I had neglected my usual caution in not providing for an emergency of this kind; but I pretended to be incredulous.
"Yet I cannot remain here indefinitely, princess," I said.
"It is the only way to save your life. If you leave here before I have seen those who would kill you, you will not live fifteen minutes after my door closes behind you. Oh, I beseech you, take the oath; promise me that you will take the oath, and let me go and tell my friends that you will do so."
She was pleading with me now, with her hands supplicatingly extended, and with an expression of such utter terror in her face because of the calamity which threatened me, that my soul was for a moment moved to pity for this woman, who could pa.s.s through so many phases of emotion in so short a period of time. But nevertheless it was not my purpose to betray that pity, then. I had still to draw her out, more and more; there was still much to learn of this complex woman, so beautiful and so n.o.ble, who yet could find a sufficient excuse to engage in such nefarious practices.
I have thought since that I was playing with myself, as well as with her, at that time; that I was making a study of Zara"s soul, rather than of her character; I have believed, and I now believe, that even at that moment I was madly in love with this half wild creature, outwardly so tamed, and yet inwardly more than half a barbarian, with the blood of her Tartar ancestors on the one side coursing hotly in her veins. I wanted to know her. I wanted to bring her out of herself. My own intuition recognized, and was making the most of a boundless and limitless sympathy that existed between us two, although I was not at the time conscious of the fact; a sympathy that found voice in Zara"s heart as well as in mine, and which needed but a touch, as of the spark to grains of powder, to fire it into a blaze of love so absolute as to sweep every other consideration from its path. My heart recognized hers, and I was subconsciously aware that hers recognized mine. It may be that I was playing two parts with her at that moment, the one being that of my ostensible character, as an agent of the czar; the other a.s.serting itself as plain Dan Derrington, an American gentleman who was very much in love.
"Do you suppose, even then, that they would believe you, and spare me?"
I asked, with unconcealed irony, forcing myself even against my will, to render my question bitterly offensive.
"Yes, oh, yes! I would give myself as hostage for your honor. My life would be forfeited, too, if you should not keep the oath."
I hesitated. The opportunity was an alluring one in a way, for it would render the entire organization like an open book to me. But more than all else was the communion of interest that would thus be created between this peerless woman and me. Still, there were other things to be considered. The danger I would thus incur might render impotent the entire fabric that I had constructed with so much care; and truth to tell I could not bring myself to the point of utilizing a woman"s confidence in order ultimately to betray her and her friends.
"I cannot take the oath, princess," I said, calmly.
"Think! think!" she exclaimed.
"I have thought. I cannot do it."
"Sit down again, Mr. Dubravnik. There is no danger as long as you remain here. I wish to tell you something. I want you to know why I am a nihilist; then, perhaps, you may be of a different opinion."
I obeyed her and she resumed her position on the couch, but her entire manner had undergone another change. The contempt, the scorn, the anger had all died out of her face which now a.s.sumed a retrospective expression and when she next addressed me her eyes had in them a dreamy, far away light, as though she were living in the past while she recited the strange tale that thrilled me as nothing else ever had, or ever has done.
"I have heard," she began, "that you yourself have seen some of the horrors of Siberia, but I doubt it. I do not even believe that you are a Russian, and to be perfectly frank I do not believe that your name is Dubravnik. I am of the opinion--and I did not think of it until since the commencement of this interview--that you are not what you seem to be, and that your mission in Russia is in some way connected with the Government police; that you are more than a pa.s.sive enemy of nihilism--that you are, in short, an active one. If I am right there exists all the more reason why I must appeal to your manhood, your honor, your sense of justice, to your bravery and chivalry. Who are you, Mr. Dubravnik?"
"I am Daniel Derrington, an American, in the service of the czar."
"And therefore connected with the police."
"No. The police do not know me, save as you know me; not even the terrible Third Section."
She scarcely noticed my confession, so absorbed was she by the mere thought of the story she was about to relate.
Her eyes were turned towards the window, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap, her chin was raised, and she seemed to be looking into the past as one might look upon a picture hanging against the wall, observing every detail of it minutely, and yet conscious only of the whole.
"Fancy yourself, a Russian of n.o.ble birth, an officer in the army, a favorite at court, the possessor of almost unlimited wealth and happy beyond the dreams of heaven," she said, dreamily. "Search your memory for the picture of a beautiful girl--she was only a girl, not yet twenty, when my story begins--and make this one of whom I speak thrice more beautiful than the picture you delineate. She was your sister. She _is_ your sister. You are her brother in the story I shall relate to you. You two are fatherless and motherless; you are all that is left of your family, once famous, and seemingly destined through you to become so again. You are a favorite with the czar, and your sister is the pet of the royal family. Your influence at court is unlimited. You are on the summit of the wave of favor and popularity. Have you drawn the picture?"
"I endeavor to do so, princess."
"You and Yvonne--she had a French name--reside in the same palace where your fathers lived before you. Your sister is the idol of your heart.
You worship her with such devotion that it becomes a maxim quoted by mothers to their sons. You idealize her, and are proud of her; and she is worthy of it all. Ah, sir, follow me with care, for the story will touch you, I believe, as nothing else could do."
Zara left the couch and crossed to the window, where she stood staring through it for a long period of time, so silent, so still, so like a statue in her att.i.tude, that I beheld her with something like awe, while I trembled with eagerness for her to speak again. I must admit that the story she had begun to relate had thus far made no impression upon me, and that it was only the voice of the woman I loved, and the changing expressions of its tone, and her beautiful countenance, which attracted me then. She was so wholly lovable in every attribute of her being; and now, absorbed as she was by the retrospective consideration of the tale she had begun to relate, and because her manner was entirely impersonal, she became even more compelling in her fascinations for me. I forgot, for the moment, that she was a Russian princess and a nihilist, and remembered only the one absorbing fact that she was a woman. My duties in St. Petersburg and the character I had a.s.sumed in fulfilling them, the city itself and all my surroundings, the environment of the moment and all that went with it, faded from my mental view, and left us two there, utterly alone in a world of our own, self created by my own conceit of the moment.
I do not know what impulse it was that brought me to my feet with a sudden start of resolve, but I had taken three or four strides toward her, with arms outstretched to seize her lithe form in my embrace, and to crush her against me in a burst of pa.s.sion which I found myself no longer able to control, when I was startled into motionlessness and silence by a sudden cry from Zara, who turned about and faced me for an instant, and who then seized me by the arm and drew me to the window, pointing into the street as she did so.