Princess Zara

"I do not doubt it," I said.

"You must take the oath. You must take it. You shall repudiate that

other one to the czar."

"It cannot be, Zara."

"It must be! It shall be!"

"No," I said; and there was such calm finality, such forcible emphasis

in the monosyllable I used, that she drew still farther away from me,

shuddering again as she did so, and I saw her face grow colder in its

expression, although I did not believe that it was caused by any change

in her attitude toward me.

"Can nothing move you, Dubravnik? Can nothing change you from this

purpose of yours? Must you, because you have given your word to a

tyrant, remain loyal to him? Must you, in spite of the great love you

have for me, remain true to him who is my enemy?"

"I must; for your sake as well as for mine."

"For my sake!" she laughed, and it was not a pleasant laugh to hear,

especially at that moment, and following as it did upon all the

tenderness that had passed between us. "For my sake! Why Dubravnik, it

is for my sake that I ask you to take the oath."

"Zara," I said, choosing my words deliberately, "last night in the

glass covered garden, where the colored lights were glowing, I heard

you utter words which I can never forget, and which I have thought upon

many times since I heard them. You repudiated, with all the intensity

of your soul, the methods which these nihilists employ to attain their

ends. You called them murderers, assassins, scoundrels, cutthroats,

defamers of character, and many other things which I need not name.

What you did not accuse them of, in words, you charged them with, by

implication; and now you ask me to become one with them; and not only

that, to deny my manhood and my honor by repudiating my oath to

another."

"I asked you to protect yourself and me," she said, simply, but with a

coldness and a suggestion of hardness in her tone, that had been

entirely absent from it until that instant.

"I will do that, Zara. I will save you, and I will save myself. I will

save you from yourself. There will be a way. I have not yet determined

upon what it will be, but I will find a means."

Suddenly she slipped to the floor, upon her knees before me, and with

clasped hands upraised, in an attitude of supplication, she cried aloud

in a very agony of intensity.

"Oh, my love, do as I ask you to do. Take the oath of nihilism."