Princess Zara

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 attitude, 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 assumed 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 passion 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.