Princess Zara

"Enough!" she interrupted me. "I have heard quite enough, Dubravnik!

What you say to me now, is meaningless twaddle. You are like all the

others who pit themselves against the silent body of men and women who

are engaged in seeking the freedom of their country. If you knew

anything of the horrors of Siberia, to which you so glibly refer, you

would shudder when you mention them, and you would fly with horror from

any act of your own that might commit a person to Siberia, and exile."

She came half-way around the table, and stood facing me, somewhat

nearer. "If you had taken a journey through Siberia before you offered

your services to the czar, you would have strangled yourself, or have

cut out your tongue, rather than have gone to him with any such

dastardly proposition as you confess yourself to have fathered. You

prate of stultifying yourself by taking the oath of nihilism, and

repudiating your word to Alexander. YOU! YOU! A PROFESSIONAL SPY!" She

threw back her head and laughed aloud, not with glee, but with utter

derision of spirit, and I shrank from the sound of it as I might have

done from a blow in the face.

Again she was a creature of moods and impulses. Again the wild Tartar

blood, leaping in her veins, controlled her. With a sudden move she

came nearer to me, and bending forward, looked into my face intently,

as if searching for something which had hitherto escaped her notice.

"What are you doing, Zara?" I asked her; and she replied.

"I am searching for the man whom, but a moment ago, I thought I loved.

I am seeking to find what it could have been that I saw in your eyes,

or your face, or your manner, that has so 'stultified' ME. It is an

apt word, Dubravnik."

"Seek further, and perhaps you will find."

"No," she said. "He is gone, if he ever was there;" and she shrank

slowly away from me, backward, across the room, until the table was

again between us, and she stood leaning upon it with both hands this

time, peering at me with widened eyes that might have belonged to a

child in the act of staring between the bars of a cage at some wild

beast confined within it.

It is impossible to describe her attitude and the expression of her

face, at that moment. Horror, repulsion, contempt, loathing, even

hatred, were depicted there. I recognized the fact with shuddering

despair. I was that one thing which she most despised.

It is strange how the light of the world went out, for me. In realizing

the great calamity that had fallen upon me, I forgot all else; but

strangely enough I did not once think of appealing to her. Slowly I

turned away, and with slow strides approached the door which would

admit me to the corridor, and so permit me to pass from the house to

the street.