Princess Zara

It was to be regretted that I had gone to the home of the Princess Zara

to keep my appointment that day, with so little thought of the dangers

I might have to encounter before I should leave it again. It would have

been so easy to arrange for adequate protection, and to have had at

that very moment, when I was gazing through the lace curtained window,

assistance ready at hand in the shape of men prepared to answer to any

signal I might have agreed upon. A word dropped to O'Malley at his

café, a sign made to big Tom Coyle, a note in cipher to Canfield, an

indication to anyone of my trusted lieutenants, would have placed about

me at that very moment, an environment of protection adequate to cope

with any difficulty that might arise.

But I had not foreseen the present circumstance sufficiently to be

prepared for it in that manner.

Zara and I were practically alone in that great house, save for the

servants it contained; and they were not to be counted upon in any

case, no matter what form individual effort against us might take.

I was conscious, too, while we stood there so silently together, of the

new responsibility I had taken upon myself during the love scene that

had just passed; and I was suddenly aware of the danger which

threatened my beloved, through me.

I did not realize it until that instant. I had thought, selfishly

enough, only of what she had said about my own peril. I had remembered

only that I was the object of a planned assassination, because some one

whom I had not discovered at the time, had overheard the interview in

the garden to which I had been a witness the preceding night, and had

also listened to the one that followed it, between Zara and me.

The thrill of alarm that convulsed me, when the full realization of

this aspect of the affair came home to me, was startling and

paralyzing. Whatever the friends of nihilism might do to me now, would

have its crushing effect upon her, also. Nothing could touch me, that

would not injure her. We had become one, indeed, in the sense of being

so absorbed in each other, so blended in soul and in thought, that

whatever affected one, must act with redoubled power upon the other.

Judged from the standpoint of the nihilists themselves, there was no

doubt that they were logical enough in their determination to kill

me. From their view of the case, I was merely a spy, or at least

a prospective one, who had overheard a confidence delivered by the

Princess Zara de Echeveria, which placed her so absolutely in my power

that I held her life, as the saying goes, in the hollow of my hand; and

they could not know, would never guess, that now we had learned to love

each other, and that she was dearer and sweeter to me than all else in

the world.