Three Weeks

"Can I do nothing for you, beloved?" Paul asked. Here was a phase which he had not yet seen.

"Ah!" she said, bitterly, and threw up her head. "No! his high place protects him. But for his life I would conquer all fate."

"Darling, darling--" said Paul, who knew not what to say.

"But, Paul, if a hair of your head should be hurt, I would kill him myself with these my own hands."

Once Paul had seen two tigers fight in a travelling circus-van which came to Oxford, and now the memory of the scene returned to him when he looked at his lady's face. He had not known a human countenance could express such fierce, terrible rage. A quiver ran through him. Yes, this was no idle boast of an angry woman--he felt those slender hands would indeed be capable of dealing death to any one who robbed her of her mate.

But what passion was here! What force! He had somehow never even dreamt such feelings dwelt in women--or, indeed, in any human creatures out of sensational books. Yet, gazing there at her, he dimly understood that in himself, too, they could rise, were another to take her from him. Yes, he could kill in suchlike case.

They were silent for some moments, each vibrating with passionate thoughts; and then the lady leant over and laid her cheek against the sleeve of his coat.

"Heart of my heart," she said, "I frighten and ruffle you. The women of your country are sweet and soft, but they know not the passion I know, my Paul--the fierceness and madness of love--"

Paul clasped her in his arms.

"It makes me worship you more, my Queen," he said. "Englishwomen would seem like wax dolls now beside you and your exquisite face--they will never again be anything but shadows in my life. It can only hold you, the one goddess and Queen."

Her eyes were suffused with a mist of tenderness, the passion was gone; her head was thrown back against his breast, when suddenly her hand inadvertently touched against the pocket where Dmitry's pistol lay. She started violently, and before he could divine her purpose she snatched the weapon out, and held it up to the light.

Her face went like death, and for a second she leant against the parapet as if she were going to faint.

"Paul," she gasped with white lips, "this is Dmitry's pistol. I know it well. How did you come by it?--tell me, beloved. If he gave it to you, then it means danger, Paul--danger--"