We crossed to the window together, and stood looking through it upon
the snow clad streets of the city. The storm of the preceding day and
night had entirely cleared away, leaving only the inevitable traces of
its violence.
As we stood there, Zara pulled the lace curtains between us and the
window, so that we were screened from view, while we were enabled,
ourselves, to see with perfect distinctness, up and down the
thoroughfare against which her home was fronted.
It might have been a Sunday morning, so peaceful and quiet was the
scene, and so purely white was everything, in its covering of snow,
while the crisp atmosphere of that cold but brilliant Winter day,
sparkled and glinted in the sunshine as if thousands of microscopic
diamonds were glistening there.
A solitary policeman passed into our view and out of it again, a
britzska rushed past an adjacent corner with the horse at galloping
speed; a child played with its father for a moment, within our range
of vision, and then disappeared; a fur clad pedestrian ran up the steps
of a nearby residence, and passed inside of it; all these trivial
incidents of observation, came and went, while we stood there, leaving
behind them no impression save one of peace, quiet and security. Yet
they impressed themselves upon my memory indelibly, and I can see
before me even now, the vision of that afternoon in St. Petersburg,
with the clinging right hand of my beloved one resting upon my
shoulder, with my left arm about her warm and pulsing body, with love,
in all its transcendent qualities, dominating all things real and
unreal, and filling my heart, and soul, and my intelligence, with a
perfection of blissful content which words cannot describe, and which
may never be understood save by him who has experienced it.
What terror had Zara seen through that window, that had startled her
so, just before we discovered and confessed our mutual love? Whatever
it may have been, no evidence of it remained, to suggest disquiet in my
own present sense of security. There was nothing there to menace me,
and even though Zara's brother Ivan, and others of his kind, fanatics
all, in their nihilistic tendencies, wild beasts in their blood lusts,
fiends in their methods, as they were--whatever they might threaten,
seemed small indeed to me, in that moment of ecstasy. For it was a
moment of ecstasy; the word "moment" being measured by the rule of
space, limitless and unconfined.
Zara did not know who and what I was, save only that I was a man, and
her lover. Beyond that, her imagination had not travelled, and her
desires had not sought.
She did not understand that I was at the head of a great fraternity,
organized and established by myself, and that I had under my control,
if not obedient to my direct command, several hundred individuals
within the limit of that city, who would serve me instantly, and who
would fight to the death for me if there were need.