Ziska, The Problem of a Wicked Soul

Gervase fixed his eyes on her with an audacious look which seemed to hint that he might possibly take advantage of being alone with her to enforce his ideas of love more eloquently than was in accordance with the proprieties. She perceived his humor, smiled, and coldly gave him back glance for glance. Then, rising from the divan, she drew herself up to her full height and surveyed him with a kind of indulgent contempt.

"You are an uprincipled man, Armand Gervase," she said; "and do you know I fear you always will be! A cleansing of your soul through centuries of fire will be necessary for you in the next world,--that next world which you do not believe in. But it is perhaps as well to warn you that I am not without protection in this place ... See!" and as she spoke she clapped her hands.

A clanging noise as of brazen bells answered her,--and Gervase, springing up from his seat, saw, to his utter amazement, the apparently solid walls of the room in which they were, divide rapidly and form themselves in several square openings which showed a much larger and vaster apartment beyond, resembling a great hall. Here were assembled some twenty or thirty gorgeously- costumed Arab attendants,--men of a dark and sinister type, who appeared to be fully armed, judging from the unpleasant-looking daggers and other weapons they carried at their belts. The Princess clapped her hands again, and the walls closed in the same rapid fashion as they had opened, while the beautiful mistress of this strange habitation laughed mirthfully at the complete confusion of her visitor and would-be lover.

"Paint me now!" she said, flinging herself in a picturesque attitude on one of the sofas close by; "I am ready."

"But I am not ready!" retorted Gervase, angrily. "Do you take me for a child, or a fool?"

"Both in one," responded the Princess, tranquilly; "being a man!"

His breath came and went quickly.

"Take care, beautiful Ziska!" he said. "Take care how you defy me!"

"And take care, Monsieur Gervase; take care how you defy ME!" she responded, with a strange, quick glance at him. "Do you not realize what folly you are talking? You are making love to me in the fashion of a brigand, rather than a nineteenth-century Frenchman of good standing,--and I--I have to defend myself against you also brigand-wise, by showing you that I have armed servants within call! It is very strange,--it would frighten even Lady Fulkeward, and I think she is not easily frightened. Pray commence your work, and leave such an out-of-date matter as love to dreamers and pretty sentimentalists, like Miss Helen Murray."