Princess Zara

"I did not have an opportunity, for you never asked me to do so," said

the soft tones of the princess immediately behind me; and as I turned

she added: "but these rooms are suffocating, so if you will give me

your arm now, Mr. Dubravnik, we will lead the way, and perhaps the

others will follow. I know that the gentlemen are longing for an

opportunity to smoke."

"Dubravnik was on the point of leaving us," the prince called after

her. "You arrived just in time, princess. Perhaps you can persuade him

to change his mind."

"Were you contemplating suicide, Mr. Dubravnik?" she asked laughing;

but there was an undercurrent of gravity in her question which was

deeply significant.

"Something very like it," I replied, as gravely, "since I was about to

leave your presence."

"Supposing you to be serious"--and I felt that her hand unconsciously

tightened its clasp upon my arm as we moved away--"would it not be

better for me to do the deed, than for you?"

"I am afraid that the supposition is altogether too foreign to my

nature for me to entertain it, princess."

We had entered the garden, and a throng of guests were trooping after

us. I glanced down at my companion, and saw that she was regarding me

rather anxiously through her lashes.

"Suicide is the only solution for all problems at once," she said.

"Pardon me; it is the solution for only one."

"Only one? What is that?"

"Moral cowardice."

"But there may be circumstances where it offers the only means of

escape from an alternative that is infinitely worse, Mr. Dubravnik." We

were in the act of passing one of the little side paths, and I drew her

into it, noticing that there was just a suggestion of resistance from

my companion when I did so; but it was only for an instant. Then, as I

paused abruptly underneath one of the green shaded globes, she added,

as though she knew that I perfectly understood her: "I have really been

considering the subject quite seriously."

I looked down at her. The green hue of the light above us seemed to

have transformed her into a spirit. It had changed the color of her

dress, of her hair, and it had touched her cheeks as with a magic wand

which softened and heightened every feature. Instead of transforming

her into something that she was not, I was convinced that it brought

her back from what she was not to what she really was. At all events, I

realized that she was in deadly earnest.

In that moment I felt again all the spell of this woman's charm as she

stood before me, beneath the glow of that shaded light, looking up into

my face with her beautiful eyes now widened with serious concern, with

her full, lithe, graceful body pulsing with life so close to mine,

while she talked calmly, and seriously I knew, too, of destroying it by

her own act.