"Do you think that we have no wrongs to right?" she demanded.
"I think you have many, princess, judging from your standpoint; but you
cannot right them by committing greater ones. Nothing can dignify or
ennoble deliberate assassination, or wanton, cruel, secret murder. The
nihilists are assassins, murderers, cutthroats."
"You do not know! You do not know!"
"Perhaps not."
"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 assassins, 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."