His Hour

The Prince took it down and placed it in her hand.

"That sword belonged to a famous person," he said--"a Cossack--Stenko

Razin was his name--a robber and a brigand and a great chief. He loved

a lady, a Persian Princess whom he had captured, and one day when out

on his yacht on the Volga, being drunk from a present of brandy some

Dutch travellers had brought him, he clasped her in his arms. She was

very beautiful and gentle and full of exquisite caresses, and he loved

her more than all his wealth. But mad thoughts mounted to his brain,

and after making an oration to the Volga for all the riches and plunder

she had brought him, he reproached himself that he had never given this

river anything really valuable in return, and then exclaiming he would

repair his fault, unclasped the clinging arms of his mistress and flung

her overboard."

"What a horrible brute!" exclaimed Tamara, and she put down the sword.

The Prince took it up and drew it from its sheath.

"The Cossacks had a wild strain in them even in those days," he said.

"You must not be too hard on me for merely riding my horse!"

"Would you be cruel like that, too, Prince?" Tamara asked; and she sat

down for a second on the arm of a carved chair. And when he had put the

sword back in its place, he bent forward and leaned on the back of it.

"Yes, I could be cruel, I expect," he said. "I could be even brutal if

I were jealous, or the woman I loved played me false, but I would not

be cruel to her while it hurt myself. Razin lost his pleasure for days

through one mad personal act. It would have been more sensible to have

kept her until he was tired of her, or she had grown cold to him. Don't

you agree with me about that?"

"It is a horrible history and I hate it," Tamara said. "Such ways I do

not understand. For me love means something tender and true which could

never want to injure the thing it loved."

He looked at her gravely.

"Lately I have wondered what love could mean for me. Tell me what you

think, Madame," he said.

She resolved not to allow any emotion to master her, though she was

conscious of a sudden beating of her heart.

"You would torture sometimes, and then you would caress."