Princess Zara

Ah, what maps of the world have been changed by that word yes. What

histories have been written because of its utterance, even in a

whispered tone, as hers was then.

"And your nihilists?" I asked her, still intent upon an even more

complete capitulation on her part.

"Yes," she repeated.

"And your brother? The cause you have served so intently? The purpose

of your life? Everything, Zara?"

"Yes," she said a third time, and still with that same emphasis of

finality which could not be misunderstood, and for which there was no

qualification.

I was silent and so was she; but after a little I heard her murmuring

in a tone so low that it seemed as if I scarcely heard it,

notwithstanding the fact that every word was quite distinct.

"I will leave everything for you, my love, for you are all the world to

me. There is nothing else now, but you. Nihilism and the cause it

upholds, has sunk into utter insignificance, and has become a mere

point in the history of my life, like a punctuating period that is

placed at the end of a written sentence. Nihilists, great and small,

have become mere atoms in the mystery of creation, and they can have no

further influence upon my life. The czar of all the Russias is no more

a personage to me now, than the merest black dwarf of central Africa,

and Russia itself has diminuated to a mere island in the sea of

eternity, a speck on the map of the infinite creation. You,

Dubravnik----" She paused there and smiled into my eyes with an

inimitable gesture of tenderness as she reached upward with her right

hand and brushed back the hair from my temples--"I think I shall always

call you Dubravnik. The name is yours, as I have known you, and as

Dubravnik you are mine, as I am yours."

My reply to this was not a spoken word, and it needs no explanation.

"You, Dubravnik," she continued from the point where she so sweetly

interrupted herself, "have become the universe to me, now. You are the

infinite space which comprehends all."

It was sweet to hear her express herself so; sweeter still to know,

that comprehensive as it was, it went but a little way toward

explaining all that she would have liked to say; and sweetest of all to

realize that she also exactly expressed my thought toward her, and that

she knew she did so.

There was a long silence after that, broken only by her breathing, by a

murmured word of caress, by a gesture of endearment or an occasional

sigh; but I brought it to an end presently by asking a question which

brought her out of her reverie with a start of affright.