O'Malley, Coyle, the St. Cyrs and Canfield were really therefore the several component parts of my immediate staff and those five were the only persons among all my hundreds of workers who knew Dubravnik to be their chief; and it is a perfectly safe statement to say that in all St. Petersburg, nay in all the world at that time, there were but nine persons living who had the least knowledge or even suspicion of my business; the nine were the czar, Prince Michael, the five already named, myself and Moret now in solitary confinement although in a comfortably appointed room in one of the prisons.

It is well that I should say a word or two in reference to these assistants of mine, in passing.

O'Malley was an Irishman of the finest type of bluff and honest manhood. I have known him and tried him through many a difficulty where his sterling qualities of character, his rugged honesty of purpose, his unfailing loyalty and devotion to me and his uncanny qualities as an investigator had endeared him to me both professionally and personally beyond the expression of mere words to describe it. I knew that I could rely upon him absolutely in all emergencies and that he was utterly fearless in the face of any danger that might present itself. By opening the cafe described, patronized by the elite of the Russian capital he merely followed out a plan long before undertaken in Paris for a like purpose and through the workings of his waiters and other employees he possessed sources of information and facilities for investigation unprecedented in their far reaching possibilities. There is many a whispered word and undertoned conversation carried on at a supper table over the coffee or a bottle of wine which finds its way into the ears of servitors and O'Malley's duties consisted not alone in piecing together after they were supplied to him these scraps of conversation, but in having his workers spy upon certain personages when they appeared at the cafe and so anticipate secrets which they might have to unfold. Even he had lesser men in authority under him and many of those who were almost directly under his employ believed that they were allied to the regular secret police and did not know of their employer's official capacity.

Tom Coyle, a huge rough bearded Irishman who in outward appearance might have passed anywhere for a Russian, was not less efficient or less loved and trusted by me than O'Malley. As a proprietor of a cab stand every driver was a minion of his and served him precisely as O'Malley's waiters did their chief; and it may readily be determined that the power thus exerted for making reports, for knowing the distinction and the engagements of certain individuals was far reaching indeed. Coyle also had served me in the execution of many delicate missions of the past and I could depend upon him almost as absolutely as I could upon myself.

The two St. Cyrs, husband and wife, were equally important factors in my work; indeed they provided the most far reaching assistance I had, for if you will stop to consider a moment and will realize how absolutely at the mercy of house servants the ordinary citizen is compelled to be, you will understand how an employment agency operated for the purposes of espionage can discover and reveal secrets which otherwise might never find their way outside the family circle. There is no written document, no locked bureau drawer, no hidden pocket, no secret hiding place into which the prying eyes and fingers of maid or valet, house maid and general servitor cannot penetrate. These people did their work for the St. Cyrs and reported to them, knowing nothing whatever of why they made those reports or to whom they ultimately found their way.

Canfield was also invaluable. As managing director of the Messenger Service with many of his employees working as spies, it was a comparatively easy matter to intercept letters and messages and to obtain a knowledge of the contents of documents through their skilled efforts.

I have given this resume of conditions as I established them to avoid going into detail respecting the sources of the information I made use of, but it will be understood now how thorough was my knowledge whenever I chose to exert it.

During the time that passed as I have described, I became a factor in St. Petersburg society. Supposed to possess unlimited wealth (accumulated, by the way, in Mexican mines, for it sounded well), with the crest of a noble family then extinct and half forgotten ornamenting my cards and stationery, and introduced by Prince Michael, who was known to be high in favor with the czar, palace doors were thrown wide open to receive me. I was young then, and women said that I was handsome, while men found me genial, companionable, and their master at most games and with every sort of weapon; things which men respect even if they do resent them.

The regular police systems, even to the mysterious Third Section which has no equivalent or parallel in the world, were entirely ignorant of the existence of my espionage, and many times during the months that followed I fell under suspicion. My power was so much greater than theirs that I possessed one abundant advantage, that of knowing their spies; and many of these, from time to time, I purposely allowed to become inmates of my house, from which they inevitably carried away the precise information that I wished them to obtain.

By the time the organization of the fraternity was completed, I had information in my possession which if it had gone to the emperor, would have created a social upheaval such as has never been witnessed in history. But many of the most anarchistic and irrepressible leaders of the nihilists were quietly arrested and sent where they would be rendered harmless, and others who were less violent, I left undisturbed and in seeming security, knowing that they would ultimately lead me to the point I wished to attain, the very root of the evil which I had determined to eradicate; but it was six months after my arrival in St. Petersburg when I met with the adventure which I regarded as the most remarkable of my experience, and which is really the reason for this story.

"Well, Derrington," the prince said to me one night shortly after our return from a function of more than ordinary prominence. He had stopped at my rooms for a smoke and a chat before retiring. "Have you received an invitation from the princess?"

"What princess?" I asked.

"Zara de Echeveria, the most beautiful woman in Europe." He was smiling now, and seemed to take it for granted that I should know to whom he referred.

"The name is Spanish," I said; and I vaguely recalled having heard it somewhere before that day. But evidently it had made only slight impression upon my memory.

"Yes; her father was a Spaniard, but she is a Russian of the Russians. Her title is given her by courtesy, from her mother's family. Is it possible that you do not know about her?"

"Quite."

"It is not remarkable, after all, for she left the city shortly after your arrival and has only just returned. I paid my respects to her yesterday, and took the liberty of suggesting that she add your name to her list. Look among your cards, and see if she has not sent you one."

It was among the first that my hand lighted upon and naturally we fell to discussing her. The rhapsodies concerning her in which the prince indulged led me to interpose a remark, for which I was instantly sorry.

"One would think that you were in love with her," I said.

His face fell instantly, and for a moment he was visibly confused, but at last, with a conscious smile, he said, boldly:

"Well, why not? I do not know that it is necessary to deny it since she is aware of it herself; and so, I think, is the whole city. I am a bachelor, and not turned fifty. Twenty-five years is not an impassable gulf, is it?"

"Certainly not, my dear prince. My remark was an ill timed pleasantry which you must pardon. Is she, then, so young?"

"Twenty-five."

"Let me see; her ball is for to-morrow—or rather, to-night, since it is now morning."

"Yes. Will you go with me? I will then have the pleasure of presenting you."

"Thank you; yes."

I did not see the prince again until he called for me on his way to the house of the princess where we found the parlors thronged, so that it was with difficulty that we presently made our way among the massed guests to the point where Zara de Echeveria was receiving her friends. On our way to greet her, Prince Michael encountered many acquaintances who claimed a word with him, so at last he drew me aside and we waited until there was a lull in the efforts of the crush around her; then he led me forward.

"So glad to know you, Mr. Dubravnik," she said, in my own language. "The prince has told me that you have spent a long time abroad, and prefer to speak English. I am also fond of conversing in that tongue. Will you be seated?" She made a place for me beside her, and we were soon engaged in conversation.

The Princess Zara!

It is frequently the case that we meet people who antagonize us the moment a glance or a handshake is exchanged, while our inner consciousness offers no explanation for the reasonless antipathy; on the other hand Fate brings us sometimes in contact with personalities which at once appeal to a sixth sense which is unexplainable and indefinable, but which seems to comprehend more than the combined five educated and trained sensibilities. What is that sixth sense? Who can tell? I only know that in one moment I felt as if I had known the princess all my life, and I knew instinctively that the same influences were affecting her.

I will not attempt to describe her, more than to afford a mere outline for something that was indescribable, for the charm which pervaded the atmosphere around her was felt rather than seen. It would be unfair to call her beautiful, as the prince had done, for that word comprehends merely an outward and visible sign, and with the Princess Zara, although her beauty was striking, it was the least of her attractions. I had thought that I was born and had lived, devoid of that form of self consciousness which is called diffidence, although it is only an expression of egotism; but for the first time in my life I found myself ill at ease, and wondering if I was appearing to advantage. I was conscious of myself; and what was stranger still I realized that this trained society beauty, the undoubted heroine of unnumbered conquests, was as restless as I was.

Princess Zara!

The expression as I write it brings vividly back to me the moment when I stood beside her that night amid the throng of guests surrounding us, but nevertheless conscious only of her presence. There are some occasions in the lives of men which they are not inclined to dwell upon or even to speak about; which they preserve jealously, as secrets in their own hearts, selfishly indisposed to acquaint others with them lest some of the magic of the actual moment, reinduced by retrospection, may be lost in the telling. But I could not recite the history of my experiences in St. Petersburg at that time without uncovering my innermost soul, as it was affected and influenced by Zara de Echeveria, whose charm of manner, whose redundant beauty and powers of fascination, were beyond all effort at description.

Her eyes were like stars, and yet were not too brilliant. Glowing in their depths somewhere beyond visible ken, was the assurance of unspeakable promise; and there seemed to emanate from her personality a glowing enthusiasm which thrilled whomever came into her presence.

The mere outward description of personal beauty will be forever inadequate to describe the emotions that influence a man, when he sees for the first time, the feminine perfection of creation which he is destined to adore. One may be fascinated, attracted, by any one of many qualities, or by all of them combined; one may discover perfection of form or feature, and may accept these suggestions as comprising all that is necessary to engender that quality within us which we call love; but nearly always one finds that the imitation has been accepted for the real, and that it has been so accepted and claimed only because the genuine has never appeared.

But whenever a man finds the real one, whenever it is his good fortune to encounter the genuine article, there remains no doubt in his soul of its reality. He sees and feels and knows. There is no denying the absoluteness of it. It is a perfect knowledge brought home to him with an absoluteness, which for the moment, is almost paralyzing in its effect, and the immediate consequences of which are utterly beyond comprehension.

Standing there in the presence of Zara de Echeveria, surrounded as we were by throngs of guests, interrupted frequently as it was quite natural we should be, we two were yet as utterly alone as if we had been standing upon a solitary rock in the midst of a waste of waters beyond which the vision could not penetrate.

We were utterly alone in a world by ourselves; and the strange part of it was that we both seemed to realize the truth, although neither of us at that moment could contemplate the understanding of the other.

Until I drove with the prince to that house where she received, my whole mind and intelligence had been centered upon the work I had to do at the Russian capitol; but having passed the portals of Zara's palace, and being taken into her presence, made the whole world appear suddenly small indeed, and left all that was great, and good, and worth attaining, encompassed in the very small space in which she stood.

There was a sense of completeness to it all which is inexplicable; there was a compelling force emanating from her, like the energy of radium, unseen but all powerful, which dominated me as surely, though nonetheless subtly, as the sun dominates the planets.

I have never remembered the words that passed between us at that first interview, for the reason that whatever I said, was uttered subconsciously, and became a mere incident in the great event. The meeting itself was the event. We had come together from different parts of the world. We were born of different nationalities. We had been nurtured differently, and every impulse of our respective lives had been trained in different grooves, and for different motives; and yet out of that chaos of differences had happened the wonderful thing of our meeting.

I suppose we talked as other people talk, who meet and part for the first time as we met and parted then, if we were to be judged from the standpoint and observation of others. To me it was an epoch, focused into a moment of time. To her I now know that it was the same.

I was suddenly conscious that there were many others who were waiting to claim her attention, and I got upon my feet.

"So soon, Mr. Dubravnik?" she said.

"Necessarily," I replied. "I cannot take to myself all the delight of the evening."

"You will return?"

"If I may—when you are less occupied."

I was acquainted with nearly all the guests and was stopped a dozen times on my way across the salon to where the prince was conversing with a knot of men, and as I glanced backward towards the princess with each pause I made, I always met her eyes fixed upon me—unconsciously until they met my gaze—even though she was engaged with the people who formed the group around her.

I did not seek the prince, after all. I turned aside realizing that I would rather be alone with the pleasurable thrill which still pulsed in my veins, than to crush it out with society talk, which was my particular aversion. I wandered on through the rooms, pausing for a moment here and there to exchange greetings with acquaintances, and at last emerged upon the glass-covered garden which was a miniature forest of shrubbery, palms and floral miracles. It was a spacious place dimly lighted by lamps that were shaded by red and green and yellow globes, and it was traversed by paths that were carpeted with Eastern rugs, and bordered by alluring nooks so daintily arranged and so suggestive of all things sentimental as to be indescribable. The garden was an Oriental paradise, blooming in the midst of a Russian winter; and I thought with a smile, a dangerous place for a bachelor even though he were alone—for it set him to thinking. As if to render the contrast even greater there was a furious snowstorm raging outside, and I could hear the wind howling and shrieking past the house, and the rattle of the snow as it hurled itself into fragments against the glass covering of the enclosure. I wandered on down the path I had taken as far as the extremity of the garden, and then turned into other paths. I paused once to light a cigar, and went on again, hither and thither, unheedingly; but at last I entered one of the Turkish nooks and composed myself comfortably among the cushions. There I gave myself up to the deliciousness of the hour, for no other word can describe it. There had seemed not to be another soul in the garden when I entered it, and I felt all that bliss which solitude lends to perfect surroundings. There might have been a thousand persons traversing the paths, and I could not have heard them, but I was presently startled out of my reveries by hearing my own name—or rather the one by which I was known—pronounced in a voice which I had learned, in a few brief moments, to recognize.

"Dubravnik," said the princess, evidently in reply to a question concerning me. She uttered my name in a manner that thrilled me, too. Her companion, a man, responded:

"Bah! A friend of Prince Michael's, and therefore a friend of the czar's. It would be a dangerous experiment to sound him, princess."

"Perhaps; we will discuss it another time, Ivan. Shall we go in here?"

They had paused directly in front of the place where I was concealed, or rather, only half concealed, for they could have seen me if either had chanced to look in my direction. I could see them plainly. As it was, I nestled closer among the cushions and closed my eyes, expecting discovery; but for some reason—fate impelled, doubtless—they passed on a few steps, and entered another of the Turkish bowers which was the counterpart of the one that concealed me, and they seated themselves so near to me that I could have reached out one hand and touched them had it not been for the intervening screen of tapestry which partitioned the two enclosures. The few words I had overheard convinced me that I was not to listen to confidences of a sentimental nature; otherwise I should have made my presence known, and escaped. The sentence that had reached me, uttered by the man, suggested another reason for the tryst, and I therefore listened, convinced that it was my duty to do so.



CHAPTER IX

A SECRET INTERVIEW

I wondered if they would not detect the odor of my cigar, and thus discover that they were not alone in the garden, but the draft carried the smoke away from them; and then I became absorbed in what they were saying.

"I can give you only a few moments, Ivan," murmured the princess. "My guests will miss me. You should have come to me later."

"I know; but it was impossible. There is a meeting to-night, and our good friends are very anxious to hear something from you. When can you be present to tell them in your own words what you accomplished during your journey?"

The tone of the question was masterful, and unconsciously I resented it.

What right had any other man to address my princess in that manner? for already I found myself regarding her as my princess. I knew now that I had wandered into the garden solely for the purpose of being alone to think about her, and that in my short journeys up and down the paths, finally ending among the cushions of the Turkish bower, I had had her with me for a companion. You will discover by this statement that I was still mindful of her presence near me, even though I had left her in the drawing room while I went away alone; but it is always possible to conjure a personal presence if the mind is sufficiently intent upon it, and even though that presence be not physical, it is nevertheless real.

The tone of the man who was speaking with her in the adjoining bower was masterful, as I have said. More than that it was familiar. It was even intimate, I thought, and I was conscious of a silent rage when I heard it.

I sensed his words subconsciously, and yet I had thoroughly comprehended them. He had spoken of a meeting of their "very good friends" and I had no doubt to whom he referred; neither had I any doubt at the moment, that this man talking so confidentially with the princess, was one of the "marked" members of that rapidly widening group of persons whom my busily engaged employees were learning to know.

It was with a distinct shock, however, that I realized by virtue of the intimate manner of the man, that Zara de Echeveria must also be implicated with the nihilists, since he dared to speak to her so openly, so masterfully, and with such confident reliance upon the manner in which his communication would be received. Her reply convinced me sufficiently, had I required added conviction at that moment.

"I do not know," she said. "Say that I will send word to them in the usual way, and at the earliest opportunity. Say that I was entirely successful; that everything in Paris and Berlin is in the most excellent condition, and that nothing—absolutely nothing, you understand—must be done without my knowledge and permission."

"Our friends are becoming very impatient, Zara."

"Zara!" I unconsciously repeated the name after him, but it was under my breath, so that not a sound escaped me. Who could this man be who dared to address my princess by her given name, for in my secret soul she was my princess still, even though she had already said enough to convince me that she was an enemy to the czar whom I was serving.

"Let them. They must wait," she responded, with decision. "I will not be hurried. They are sworn to obey me. Tell them to await my pleasure. It is enough."

"There are some among them—you know who they are—who chafe under this restraint, Zara. I am afraid that they will get beyond your control unless something is done speedily."

"Let those who are loyal to me serve them as they would serve Alexander, if there is any sign of insubordination," was the haughty rejoinder. "Such is my order; and now, Ivan, you must go. Stay though! What of Jean Moret?"

"He is dead."

"Dead? Do you know that to be true?"

"No. He has disappeared from the palace, nobody knows whither. He has not gone to Siberia and our agents cannot find him in the city prisons. We have made every effort. Doubtless he betrayed himself in some manner and was quietly put out of the way."

"I will investigate the matter. He might have betrayed us, if caught and put to the torture. I can make Prince Michael tell me. Moret was more fool than knave, and he might have been induced to talk."

"He might have betrayed us; he would never betray you, Zara."

"I do not think so; and yet, it may be that I have gone too far with him. It is plain that I must make my prince talk."

Her prince! God! How the expression rankled! What revelations this overheard conversation was bringing to pass! From being in the seventh heaven of bliss, transported there by the few moments I had passed in the society of Zara, I was now plunged into the hell of doubt, uncertainty, and disillusionment. She spoke of "her prince"—and there could be no possible doubt that she referred to Prince Michael—as if he were already a mere puppet in her hands, to bow before her and fawn at her feet, as she willed it. And the prince, great and noble by instinct and nature, who had with such dignity admitted to me his love for her, was having his feelings and his affections played upon as a skilled performer touches the keys of a piano.

It was a new and unsuspected phase of Zara's character thus unfolded to me; and it was a most disquieting one. Standing with her as I had done among her guests, seated beside her as I had been for a few moments before I left her to go into the garden, I had believed in her as a devout worshipper believes in his deity, thinking no evil, believing that she could do no wrong, and placing her upon a pedestal that was high above all of the petty considerations of ordinary humanity. And then, as if to add to the sudden pain that was in my heart, this man who dared to address her by her given name, and whom she called Ivan, chuckled aloud as he remarked with unwonted intimacy:

"You have only to encourage him a little, Zara. The prince will talk. Never fear. Your power——"

"Encourage him!" It is impossible to describe the sense of outrage which Zara de Echeveria managed to include in the enunciation of those two words. Listening from my place among the cushions in the Turkish bower, I was conscious of a feeling of gladness that it was so; that she resented the tone of the man, as well as the words he had uttered; that she repudiated utterly the insinuation he had made. "You use the term as if you thought it were a pleasure to me to lead men on, simply because God gave me the beauty and the power. I hate it; oh, how I hate it! Suppose that Jean Moret is dead, who, then, in God's name is responsible for his death? I, I alone! Do you think that I am so heartless that I can look upon such things with no pang of self-reproach? I wish that I were old and ugly, fortuneless and an outcast—or dead. Then I would not be compelled to prostitute my beauty and my talents to conspire with a rabble of scoundrels and convicts who discuss murder and assassination as if they were pastimes."

"Hush! You do not realize what you say, Zara. Your own life——"

She laughed outright, interrupting him.

"My own life! Do you think I care for that? I wish they would kill me and so end all this hateful, horrible scheming to murder and destroy."

"Hush, Zara! hush! You must not talk in that way."

"Not talk that way?" The princess laughed somewhat wildly, I thought, from my place of concealment, but still she made no sound that could have penetrated much farther than I was distant from their interview. "Not talk that way?" she repeated, and this time was silent for a spell, as if she were herself considering the reasons why she should not do so. There had been more of fright than menace, in the tone of the man called Ivan, when he cautioned her, and I could imagine how terrorized any member of the nihilistic fraternity must be if there were the least danger that disloyal thoughts of theirs might find lodgment in unsuspected places. "I will talk that way; I will talk as I please; nor you, nor any one, shall stand between me and my liberty of action and speech. What care I for all the murderers and assassins who form this terrible society of which we are members? Hear me? They could only swear my life away as they have done to others in many parallel cases. They could only destroy me; and Ivan, sometimes, upon my bended knees I pray for death. What matter would it be to me how death might come, so long as I am prepared to welcome it? I hate and loathe myself when I stop to consider all the contemptible acts I am compelled to perform, when I pause to realize the utter prostitution of self-respect I am forced to undergo, in order to carry on the plots of our 'good friends,' as you call them. Good friends, indeed! To whom, let me ask you, do they demonstrate the friendly spirit? Where can you point to a friendly act done by any one of them, unless it is to a prisoner already condemned, or to an assassin who is in danger of arrest? My own life?" she laughed again. "Ivan, were it not that I honestly believe that I can, by myself accomplish some great good in this undertaking, I would destroy that life with my own hands; for I tell you that it would be much easier to drive a poniard through my own heart, or to swallow a cup of poison, than it is for me to make sport of the affections of such men as the stately, generous Prince Michael, or that poor love-sick fool, Moret. Hush! don't say another word to me on the subject of warning, for it only angers me, and fills me with a contempt which I find it difficult to master."

"But, Zara, you must not talk so. I cannot listen."

"Then leave me. Go. I wish to be alone for a time before I return to the salon. Deliver my message, and also the order I gave you."

I heard no more after that, but I knew that he had gone, although there was no sound of his departure. Then I listened for the rustle of the princess' dress when she should move away. Presently it came. She sighed, then rose from the couch where she had been sitting, and I knew that she had stepped out upon the path. I closed my eyes, the better to think upon the remarkable revelations that had come to me as a result of that conversation. One, two, five, perhaps ten minutes I remained thus, turning the extraordinary incident over in my mind. But presently I opened them again, lazily and slowly at first, and then with a sudden start, for they encountered the form of the princess where she stood as motionless as a statue but with one arm extended holding back a palm leaf which half filled the entrance to my place of concealment.

God knows what impulse it was that had impelled her, in parting with her recent companion, to pause at the Turkish bower in which I was concealed, and so, to discover me. I had heard no sound whatever. I had supposed that both were gone. The shock induced by the revelations I had just overheard, the disillusionment I had experienced in regard to Princess Zara, had affected me more than I realized, and the act of closing my eyes and thinking it over had been the result of the same impulse which sends a frightened woman to her own room, to close the door behind her in order that she may be alone. By the act of closing my eyes, I shut out the world by which I was surrounded—that world which had now become so hateful to me because of the work I had to do. But nevertheless I looked up steadily into the eyes of the princess, wondering at the calmness and grace of her attitude, and amazed that she should not show more consternation than she did, at the discovery that there was a witness to her interview with the man Ivan. Save for a suggestion of pallor which had driven away the natural flushes from her cheeks, and perhaps for an added brightness, or rather a different brightness, to her eyes, she was the same as ever, although the smile which she now bestowed upon me seemed a bit constrained.



"You are not sleeping," she said, calmly, but with conviction. The remark was not a question; it was a statement.

"No," I replied, as calmly.

"And have not been asleep?"

"No."

"You heard?"

"Yes, princess, I heard."

She was silent, and minutes passed before she spoke again, so that I began to wonder if she had decided to say no more.

"Mr. Dubravnik," she said, and in English, "will you do me one favor in regard to this conversation you have overheard? Will you keep my confidence till to-morrow?"

I wondered again at the princess' coolness. Realizing the peril she was in, as she must unquestionably have done, it was strange that she could command herself so well as to remain perfectly in possession of all her faculties, in the face of such dire peril.

For a moment I hesitated. It was a very great favor that she asked of me so calmly; just how great a favor it was, she could not know; and yet there was no reason why I should not grant her request, being what I was and who I was. In that interval I wondered what this beautiful creature before me would think, or say, if she could have guessed that it was the chief of the most remarkable secret service bureau in the world whom she was addressing; if she could have guessed that the very man among all other men, whom she would least have thought of taking into her confidence, was the one before her who had listened to the conversation.

"Yes. I will do that," I replied, as deliberately as she had asked the question; and I watched her closely as I did so, holding myself well in hand, the while, in order that I might not instantly fall again under the spell of her fascinations.

"And come to me then? I will expect you at noon."

"Yes, princess."

"I thank you, sir. And now, if you will give me your arm, we will return to the drawing room."

I could not help marveling at the wonderful self possession of the woman whose life, liberty, honor, happiness, and whose all, had been by means of the conversation I had overheard, placed utterly at my mercy. Even though I were really what she supposed me to be, an ordinary citizen, the danger was no less, for I had but to repeat what I had heard, to bring about an investigation which could result in only one way. Her composure was absolute as we walked side by side towards the house, nor did she once refer to the subject upon which we were both thinking so deeply. She was a shade paler than usual, but beyond that there was no sign that anything out of the ordinary had occurred; nor did she manifest any evidence of the nervous fear which would have prostrated most women in such a predicament.

Neither of us recurred to the subject that was uppermost in our minds. Indeed we were silent during the moment that was required to traverse the length of the garden, and to pass from it into the house where the company was assembled.

But I was conscious of a subtle change in the character of my feelings towards Zara de Echeveria. The fascination that had enthralled me a little while back, was tempered now by a wholesome dread of this riotously beautiful creature who could use her God-given feminine attributes to attain such deplorable ends. What had seemed to me to be a creature of utter loveliness, had now degenerated to a thing that was momentarily horrible, because what I had believed to be all purity, and all perfection, had suddenly been revealed as something that was akin to unmoral.

We parted at the door, she to cross the room and join a group of her guests who were clamoring for her while I loitered, with no purpose save to avoid comment on the apparent fact that the princess and I had been so long a time together in the garden. The prince joined me while I stood there. He was accompanied by a man whom he wished to introduce to me.

"Ah, Dubravnik," he said. "I have been looking everywhere for you. Didn't know but you had gone. This is my friend Alexis Durnief. You've each heard me talk about the other, so you should be good friends."

"Captain Alexis Durnief?" I asked, shaking hands with him.

"The same," he replied. "Just returned from one of the far posts in Siberia, and I am very glad to be back here again. I haven't had an opportunity to greet the princess yet; you kept her in the garden so long."

I thought that he gave me a significant glance as he made the laughing remark, but as the princess herself joined us at that moment, I did not give it a second thought. He gave her his arm, and they went away together, leaving the prince and myself alone.

"I think, if you do not mind, I will go," I said. The house of Princess Zara had suddenly become hateful to me."

"What! At this hour? Why?" Prince Michael was amazed.

"Oh, there is no reason, other than that I feel like it," I told him, shrugging my shoulders and trying to look bored.

"Then stay. Some of the best people are not here, yet. Or did your half hour in the garden upset you, Dubravnik?" He essayed a light laughter as he asked the question, but it had a hollow sound, nevertheless.

"Not at all," I assured him.

"I can assure you that it is an honor which the princess confers upon very few of her friends, and never on new acquaintances. You are the only exception I have ever known," he added.

"Indeed? We met in the garden by accident, and in reality were together not more than two minutes—the time that it takes to walk the length of it, so I do not feel as greatly honored as I might have done if she had gone there with me and had given me all that time——"

"I did not have an opportunity, for you never asked me to do so," said the soft tones of the princess immediately behind me; and as I turned she added: "but these rooms are suffocating, so if you will give me your arm now, Mr. Dubravnik, we will lead the way, and perhaps the others will follow. I know that the gentlemen are longing for an opportunity to smoke."

"Dubravnik was on the point of leaving us," the prince called after her. "You arrived just in time, princess. Perhaps you can persuade him to change his mind."

"Were you contemplating suicide, Mr. Dubravnik?" she asked laughing; but there was an undercurrent of gravity in her question which was deeply significant.

"Something very like it," I replied, as gravely, "since I was about to leave your presence."

"Supposing you to be serious"—and I felt that her hand unconsciously tightened its clasp upon my arm as we moved away—"would it not be better for me to do the deed, than for you?"

"I am afraid that the supposition is altogether too foreign to my nature for me to entertain it, princess."

We had entered the garden, and a throng of guests were trooping after us. I glanced down at my companion, and saw that she was regarding me rather anxiously through her lashes.

"Suicide is the only solution for all problems at once," she said.

"Pardon me; it is the solution for only one."

"Only one? What is that?"

"Moral cowardice."

"But there may be circumstances where it offers the only means of escape from an alternative that is infinitely worse, Mr. Dubravnik." We were in the act of passing one of the little side paths, and I drew her into it, noticing that there was just a suggestion of resistance from my companion when I did so; but it was only for an instant. Then, as I paused abruptly underneath one of the green shaded globes, she added, as though she knew that I perfectly understood her: "I have really been considering the subject quite seriously."

I looked down at her. The green hue of the light above us seemed to have transformed her into a spirit. It had changed the color of her dress, of her hair, and it had touched her cheeks as with a magic wand which softened and heightened every feature. Instead of transforming her into something that she was not, I was convinced that it brought her back from what she was not to what she really was. At all events, I realized that she was in deadly earnest.

In that moment I felt again all the spell of this woman's charm as she stood before me, beneath the glow of that shaded light, looking up into my face with her beautiful eyes now widened with serious concern, with her full, lithe, graceful body pulsing with life so close to mine, while she talked calmly, and seriously I knew, too, of destroying it by her own act.

What a place to talk of suicide, there, in the midst of that oriental garden, voluptuous with a thousand unspoken suggestions, laden with the perfume of flowers, glowing with the many colored lights that illumined it, rustling as with the sound of hidden insects as the gowns of gorgeously bedecked women brushed against the growing things! Over our heads, beyond the glass roof, the storm still howled, although with less violence, and the contrast seemed strangely in keeping with the condition of my own mind, outwardly so calm and composed, yet torn by the thousand conflicting emotions that were induced by the proximity of this entrancing creature, and the knowledge of what her fate, and therefore mine, must inevitably be.



CHAPTER X

SENTENCED TO DEATH

To what lengths our conversation on that subject might have gone I will never know, for at that instant we were interrupted by Prince Michael, who was seeking my companion. I had only time to utter one admonition:

"Extremities should never be resorted to until the necessity arises, nor is it wise for one to burn a bridge until it has been crossed; besides, you have an engagement at noon to-morrow which should be kept."

"Which will be kept," she murmured, in reply. Then Prince Michael came upon us.

The prince reported that many of the guests were calling for their hostess and so I utilized the opportunity to take my leave, which I did notwithstanding the protests of my friend. He told me to make use of his sanka, which would return and wait for him after it had deposited me at my door; but when I left the house the storm had lulled almost to stopping and as the distance was not great I decided to walk. That decision very nearly cost me my life, and very materially altered my views regarding the princess as well as my intentions concerning her. As I passed through the house on my way to the street I met Captain Durnief, who stopped me for a moment.

"I feel like a boy who is dressed in his first trousers," he said to me with a laugh. "You cannot comprehend the delight of returning to this place after the experiences I have undergone in Siberia, for even the life of an officer there is little better than that of a convict. I shall have the pleasure of meeting you often, Dubravnik, for I understand that you are frequently at the palace."

"Shall you be there?" I asked.

"Yes; I am detailed to the palace guard. Have you enjoyed the evening here?"

"Hugely."

"Of course you have met the princess frequently."

Durnief had a way of half closing his eyes when he talked. He evidently intended it to give him the appearance of indifference, but it had a directly opposite effect upon me, for it was palpably a mask to conceal the intensity of his gaze—to hide the interest he felt in whatever he uttered at the time.

"No," I said, "this is my first acquaintance with her."

"Then you should consider yourself greatly honored."

"I do." Possibly my monosyllabic reply was even shorter than it needed to have been for he gestured an almost imperceptible shrug, and hesitated while he again bestowed upon me that half quizzical glance which seemed to conceal a sneer, or which might have been intended to suggest that I should have understood some obscure meaning behind his words; but I chose not to see it. Then, as we shook hands at parting he honored me by a pressure or his thumb which Moret had taught me to understand as the very faintest kind of an interrogation. I have already mentioned it as often given by a nihilist to one whom he believes may be one with him. It was so faint and so uncertain that it might easily have been mistaken for an accident, and like the glance I permitted it to pass unnoticed.

It was about half past two in the morning when I emerged from the house. The air was exhilaratingly cold, and the storm was nearly past. The clouds which had hovered over the city all the preceding day and night were still in evidence, however, so that the streets between the widely separated lamps were dark and lonely. The distance I had to go was something more than a mile, and I had traversed more than half of it and was in the act of turning a corner when directly beside me, and quite near, I saw a flash, was conscious of a loud report, and felt that I had received a sharp and telling blow on my head.

When I was again conscious of my surroundings I was in my own rooms, while beside the couch upon which I had been placed were my valet, a physician, and my faithful coadjutor, Tom Coyle.

"Hello, Tom; what's up?" I asked, feebly.

"Faith, you'd have been up higher than you care to go just yet, Dannie, if I hadn't been drivin' wan av me own cabs this night, owin' to the sudden death av wan av me min," he replied. "The doctor says the bullet didn't hurt ye much, but ye'd have been froze stiff if I hadn't found ye whin I did."

"Tell me about it," I commanded.

"Divil a bit there is to tell, more than I've already said. I was goin' to the princess' afther me fare, whin I heard a shot. I wint where I heard the sound and found you. That's all I know."

"Where did the bullet strike me?"

"Foreninst yer head, Dannie. Ye'll have a bald spot there, I'm thinkin'. But it only broke the skin an' hit ye a welt that made ye see stars this cloudy night. Now I'm goin'. Maybe I'll have a report for you whin I come back. There's snow enough. The blackguard ought to have left some tracks."

There is a spot on the back of the head where a very light blow will bring about insensibility, and it was exactly on that spot that the bullet had struck me, taking off a little hair and skin, but otherwise doing no damage; but I could not help connecting the attempt on my life with the experiences of the night; in other words, with the woman whose guest I had been and whose secrets I had overheard. I had cherished a feeling of the utmost charity for her until that moment, but the "accident" changed all that, for I had not a doubt in my mind that it was by her order that somebody had made the attempt to assassinate me.

After a few hours' sleep I felt as well as ever, and before the time to make my call upon the princess I paid a visit to Jean Moret. I had neglected to say that the only letter he had sent away since his imprisonment was one to his mother, from whom he had received a reply addressed through one of my agents, and in explanation of his reluctance to send more, he had said: "It is better that the world should think me dead." Concerning the woman for whose sake he became a nihilist, he never spoke. But the experiences I had passed through at the home of the princess, the preceding night, made me wise concerning the identity of the woman who had influenced him. Indeed I had had it from her own lips that she had played with this man, even as she had hoodwinked the prince. What the relations between her and Moret might have been, in what manner they had been brought together in the past, and by what transformation of individuality he had dared to raise his eyes to a princess, I could not even conjecture. There was no doubt, however, that she had used him for one of the marionettes in her puppet show; and now he, poor devil, because of it, was safer in a prison cell, and no doubt happier, too, than he would have been at liberty.

I wanted the man to talk and to talk about her, and I must confess what I did not at the moment realize that my desire found its source more in personal resentment against any confidential passages that may have taken place between those two, than in my plain duty to the cause I was serving.

There are many kinds of jealousy, and each kind will find its expression through innumerable channels. If I had been charged with jealousy at that moment, I would have repudiated the suggestion with scorn and contempt; and yet I was jealous.

I had thought rather deeply upon this approaching conversation with Moret, while on my way to interview him, but I was no nearer to a determination regarding what I should say to him, when I entered the room he occupied in the prison, than I had been when the idea first occurred to me. Now when I entered the room where he was imprisoned, I said:

"Why is it, Moret, that you have never taken any further advantage of my promise that you could write and send letters?"

"There is no one with whom I care to communicate," he replied.

"Not even with the princess?" I asked the question idly, watching him from between half closed lids.

"With what princess?" he asked calmly, and without a trace of surprise or resentment in his perfectly trained countenance.

"Zara de Echeveria," I said, coldly.

"I do not know her."

"No! She knows you."

"Indeed? It is an honor to be known by a princess."

"I have it from her own lips that she is responsible for your presence in the palace."

"Then surely there is no need to interview me on the subject." He was thoroughly my equal in this play-of-words.

"She was told in my presence that you were dead. Would you not like to hear what she said in reply?" I asked him.

"If you care to tell me."

"She said that it was better so; that if you lived you would have betrayed all your friends—including her; that in fact you were more fool than knave."

"She is not complimentary; but as I do not know her, it makes no difference." Nothing could have been more composed than Moret's manner was.

"You will not discuss her?"

"I would if I could, but I do not know her, monsieur."

"Well, Moret, I like your loyalty, even to one who has used you as a mere tool, and who is now rejoiced to learn that you are dead, and out of her way, with the dangerous secrets you possess. I am going to her as soon as I leave you; perhaps she will talk about you again."

Moret stared at me unwinkingly, but with a countenance that was like marble in its intensity. I knew that he was suffering, and that my words were the cause of his agony. I knew that I was prodding him deeply and severely, thrusting the iron into his soul with as little compunction as a Mexican charo exerts when he "cinches" a heavily burdened burro. But I was doing it with malice prepense, and I was doing it for a purpose.

I wished, somehow, to compel this man to talk freely with me about the princess and yet all the time I was reluctant in my own soul to have him do it. During that interval Moret was greater than I; more chivalrous than I; for he remained loyal to his duty towards her, as he saw it, in spite of the terrible accusation I had made against her womanliness, and notwithstanding all the insinuations I had put forward, respecting her utter disregard and contempt for him.

"Perhaps she will do so," he said; "that is, if she knows aught to say of me."

He was silent for a moment after that, and I waited, knowing that I had tried this man to the utmost point of his mental endurance.

Presently he raised his eyes again to mine, and said:

"Mr. Dubravnik, at the very beginning of our acquaintance, when you made a prisoner of me in one of the rooms of the suite you were to occupy in the palace, I told you that I had gone into this business for the love of a woman, and it was tacitly, if not literally agreed between us at that time, that the woman's personality and name should form no part of our future discussions. You have chosen, at this time, to mention a princess, to whom you give the name of Zara de Echeveria, and I have told you that I know no such person; that the name means nothing to me. What you may surmise, Mr. Dubravnik, can have no effect upon me, or upon your relations with me, or mine with you. So now I tell you once again, that while I am perfectly willing to believe myself to be morally free to discuss with you all phases of nihilism, I will not discuss this woman you have named, or any other woman."

He bowed his head and I could see beads of sweat upon his forehead which betrayed the mental anguish he was undergoing. I knew that it was far worse than physical torture, and as there was nothing to gain by prolonging it, and nothing more to be said, I withdrew.

At the end of another half hour I was announced to the princess.

She received me in a diminutive bower of Oriental luxury. Her decorative tastes were decidedly Eastern and lavishly extravagant. She knew how to arrange a room with the object of stealing away a man's reserve. There is something about the atmosphere of well chosen surroundings which intoxicates judgment and murders discretion—which bars reason at the threshold and generates madness of thought and deed beyond it. A Solon in the princess' drawing room might become a puppet in her boudoir; in that fascinating atmosphere a Jove would have degenerated to a Hermes, or Mars have cast away his sword and shield for the wings of Apollo. To enter it, was like awaking from a vivid dream of battle to find the soft arms of love around you, and to feel the lethargy of infinite content. Add to this the personality of the Princess Zara, her half hesitating smile of welcome in which pleasure and dread were equally mingled; suffuse her face with a quick blush, and instantly replace it with a touch of pallor; render her manner with a suggestion of hauteur, softened by a gesture of timidity and doubt; listen to her voice, low-toned and infinitely calm yet vibrating in a minor chord of uncertainty and dread; feel the clasp of her hand, cold when it touches yours, yet instantly thrilling you with a glow induced by the contact, and—remain thoroughly master of yourself if you can. Retain, if you have the strength to do so, the opinions you had formed, the judgments you have passed. If you succeed, you are a giant; if you fail, you are just what I was—a man, and human.

"You are punctual, and I am grateful," she murmured. "If you had been late——"

All the hardness I had felt before returned to me then.

"If I had been late you would have known the reason, princess," I said.

"No; but I should have feared it."

"I would have been dead."

"Dead!"

"Yes; but, unfortunately, the attempt upon my life did not succeed, thanks to Fate and poor marksmanship."

"The attempt on your life! I do not understand."

I turned my head so that she could see where the plaster hid the wound made by the bullet of the would-be assassin.

"A better marksman would have compelled me to break my engagement, princess," I said.

She extended one hand and rested a finger lightly upon the wound, as though she intended the mere touch to heal it. With the other hand she gently turned my face towards hers; yet she did it in a way that was devoid of intimacy. Somehow she changed what might have been suggestive of familiarity, into a gesture of womanly tenderness; and there was undoubtedly horror in her eyes, and a flash of angry resentment, too.

"You think that I am responsible for this?" she asked, releasing me and stepping backward.

I bowed, but made no reply.

Impulsively, she crossed the room, and from the floor, where she had doubtless thrown it after reading, secured a crumpled wad of paper, and after straightening and smoothing it, gave it into my hand.

"Read," she said.

"'Our interview in the garden was overheard by two persons beside ourselves,'" I read, aloud. "'One of them, fortunately, was a friend; the other may not keep the engagement made with you.'"

"It is from Ivan," she said. "It is because I received that note that I would have been anxious if you had been detained. It did not occur to me to doubt that you would be prompt until I read that. I did not doubt you, Mr. Dubravnik. I might have killed myself, but I would not have—ah! To think that you could deem me capable of such an act as that!"

"I did not princess, until—well, there was no other theory. At all events, I have changed my mind. Who is Ivan?"

"My brother."

"I did not know you had a brother."

"Naturally, since his existence is forgotten. He was sentenced to Siberia when he was sixteen. Now he is thought to be dead, but he escaped, and is here. He must have brought some one with him last night—somebody who listened to everything. Do you know what that note means, my friend? It means that you have been sentenced to death. It means that the nihilists will surely take your life; and oh, my God, there is no escape!"



CHAPTER XI

FOR THE SAKE OF THE CZAR

When one is sentenced to death by the nihilists in Russia it sends a cold shiver down the back, no matter how brave and self-reliant one may be, for those fanatics have an uncomfortable way of carrying out such decrees to the bitter end. However, I smiled and assured the princess that I thought I could find a way to avoid the consequences of my eavesdropping, and then awaited the moment when she would say more. For a long time she was silent, and during it I studied her carefully, for she was the most complex puzzle that I had ever encountered in the shape of a woman. I had heard enough to know that she was not only a conspirator against the life of the emperor, but that she was ostensibly if not really, the leader among her fellow conspirators; or if not the leader, then a leader. I had heard her talk glibly of assassination and death, and I had heard her deplore in mental anguish the part she was forced to play in the game of Russian politics. In one moment I had believed her to be a heartless schemer, a murderess, and one who was devoid of compassion; and in the next I was forced to the conjecture that she was a victim of circumstances, and that she had no love for or sympathy with the cause she advocated. Now, as I watched her, the same emotions succeeded each other in my judgment of her character, and finally I summed them all up in the decision that she was a being who was swayed by impulses. There are seeming paradoxes which will explain just what my conclusions were concerning Zara de Echeveria. She was deliberately impulsive; calculatingly reckless; systematically chaotic. The warm, Southern blood in her veins impelled her to deeds which were rendered thrice effective by reason of the fact that she applied to them the calculating coolness and method of her Russian ancestors. Hence the paradox.

Presently she raised her eyes to mine.

"Dubravnik," she said slowly, "there is one way of escape for you; and there is only one."

"What is that?" I asked.

"You must become a nihilist."

"I had thought of that," I returned coolly. For, indeed, I had thought of it, although not at all from the motive she understood me to mean.

"You had thought of it?" she cried. "Do you say that earnestly, or only to lead me on?"

"Was it not this very point that you were discussing with your brother when you entered the garden last night, princess?" I asked, recalling the mention of my name between them at that time.

"Yes; I had said to him that you were the kind of a man who should be added to our ranks. I think you must have heard his reply."

"Yes."

"Do you know what nihilism is, Mr. Dubravnik?"

"No. I have always regarded it as a dangerous organization; morally dangerous, I mean. You must not think that I have considered joining it for any other reason than to place myself in a position where I will feel that it is my duty to respect the confidence that I stole from you, rather than to betray it."

"Then you never had such a thought until you knew I was a nihilist?"

"Never."

"And you would join us for my sake?"

"No."

"For whose, then?"

"For the sake of the czar."

"Ah! You would join only to betray them all into the hands of the police! That is what you mean."

Zara leaped to her feet. Her whole manner underwent a change and for the instant she was completely dominated by a furious scorn which found its expression in every single pose of the attitude she assumed. Her eyes blazed with the sudden anger she felt at me, brought about more by the thought which came to her that I, whom she had stooped to admire, was nothing but a spy. A torrent of words rushed to her lips, at least her appearance was that she was on the point of denouncing me most bitterly; but I raised a hand and interrupted her, bending slightly forward, and speaking with sharp decision, although coolly, and with studied conciseness of expression.

"No," I said. "If I should become a nihilist, it would be to protect the emperor, not to betray your friends."

Again her entire manner underwent a change. As if she thoroughly believed me, the fury of scorn left her eyes, the angry glitter of them ceased, the rigidity of her attitude relaxed, and I saw that she was regarding me with an expression of wondering amazement, in which pity, and longing, not unmixed with admiration, were dominant. She was silent for the moment, but she kept her eyes fixed upon mine, and gradually they began to glow with that fire of enthusiasm which no argument can ever hope to overcome. Looking upon her I realized that if she were not a nihilist at heart, she had become one by reason of some great mental cataclysm through which she had passed. I believed then, and I was to know later, that I was correct, and that nothing at present apparent could swerve her from her set purpose, or could influence her against the cause she had undertaken, and was now upholding, so valiantly. The spasms of remorse that rushed upon her at times, and such feelings of repugnance as I had heard her express in the garden, were only oases in the desert of her perverted judgment, engendered in her very soul by some terrible calamity through which she had personally passed, or regarding which she had been a close observer. When she spoke again, it was with low-toned softness, and she glided a step or two nearer to me, raising her beautiful eyes, now softened to an appealing quality, and clasping her hands in front of her with a gesture of suppliant helplessness that was almost overwhelming.

"Do you think that we have no wrongs to right?" she demanded.

"I think you have many, princess, judging from your standpoint; but you cannot right them by committing greater ones. Nothing can dignify or ennoble deliberate assassination, or wanton, cruel, secret murder. The nihilists are assassins, murderers, cutthroats."

"You do not know! You do not know!"

"Perhaps not."

"Having heard what you did—knowing, as you do, my secret—unwilling as I know you are, to betray me, what do you propose, Mr. Dubravnik?"

I replied deliberately.

"I have thought of joining the nihilists, but I have reconsidered the question as impracticable. Therefore, I have decided that you must leave Russia."

"I? Leave Russia? Ordered away by you?"

"Yes, princess."

She laughed wildly, and again this creature of impulse underwent one of her lightning changes of which I had seen so many evidences. She was indignant now, made so by offended pride, because of the affront my words had put upon her social status. She, a princess, high in place, to be ordered out of her own country by a man who was a stranger to her, was unprecedented.

"Do you think that I am a weak thing to be ordered about like that by a man whom I never met until last night? Beware, sir, lest you make me regret that the bullet did not do its work more effectively. I am a princess; I have wealth, power, influential friends; do not think that the czar would believe what you would say, when he heard the story that I could tell him."

I shrugged my shoulders carelessly. It was part of my purpose to anger her even to the point of madness, for in that way alone could I hope to draw her out to the point of revealing herself to me truly. And besides, I was again falling under that fascination which exerted such strange and compelling power over me.

"If I believed you to be sincere in what you say now, it would make my unfortunate duty much more simple," I said.

"Your duty! What is your duty? To betray a woman?"

"Precisely that."

"And you would do that? You?"

"If the alternative fails, yes."

Again she rose from the couch upon which she had relaxed. She came and stood quite near to me, and with infinite scorn, impossible to describe, she said slowly:

"I think our interview is at an end, Mr. Dubravnik, for there is evidently nothing to be gained by it. I much prefer to choose my friends among those whom you call assassins, than from frequenters of the palace—if the others are like you."

I rose also, and bowed coldly.

"As you will, princess," I said. "I promised to keep your secret twenty-four hours. You have still ten hours in which to do one of three things to obviate the necessity that is now upon me, of betraying you."

"Indeed!" haughtily.

"The easiest one will be for you to notify me of your intention to depart from the country. The second, quite as effective, was suggested by yourself last night when we talked of suicide. The third will perhaps prove more congenial than either of the others; you can have me murdered." I bowed, and started towards the door, but she barred the way before I could reach it.

"You shall not go!" she cried, extending her arms as if to bar the way against my exit, and again her speaking countenance betrayed the impulse within her. This time it was terror.

"No? Is your brother Ivan here to complete the work so badly begun, princess?" I purposely rendered my question insolently offensive.

For a moment she gazed at me in horror; then, with a sob in her throat, she stepped aside and pointed towards the door.

"Go," she said. "I should not have detained you." But as I was about to take her at her word she burst into a passion of tears. At the same instant she leaped towards me, and seizing me with both hands, drew me back again to the middle of the floor.

"No—no—no—no!" she cried. "You shall not go! Don't you know that you would be shot down at the door of my house, or at best before you had gone a hundred feet away from it? Have you forgotten that your appointment with me to-day was known by those who have decided upon your death? Will you force me to acquiesce in your murder, even though you believe me capable of committing it?"

I knew that what she said was undoubtedly true, for I had neglected my usual caution in not providing for an emergency of this kind; but I pretended to be incredulous.

"Yet I cannot remain here indefinitely, princess," I said.

"It is the only way to save your life. If you leave here before I have seen those who would kill you, you will not live fifteen minutes after my door closes behind you. Oh, I beseech you, take the oath; promise me that you will take the oath, and let me go and tell my friends that you will do so."

She was pleading with me now, with her hands supplicatingly extended, and with an expression of such utter terror in her face because of the calamity which threatened me, that my soul was for a moment moved to pity for this woman, who could pass through so many phases of emotion in so short a period of time. But nevertheless it was not my purpose to betray that pity, then. I had still to draw her out, more and more; there was still much to learn of this complex woman, so beautiful and so noble, who yet could find a sufficient excuse to engage in such nefarious practices.

I have thought since that I was playing with myself, as well as with her, at that time; that I was making a study of Zara's soul, rather than of her character; I have believed, and I now believe, that even at that moment I was madly in love with this half wild creature, outwardly so tamed, and yet inwardly more than half a barbarian, with the blood of her Tartar ancestors on the one side coursing hotly in her veins. I wanted to know her. I wanted to bring her out of herself. My own intuition recognized, and was making the most of a boundless and limitless sympathy that existed between us two, although I was not at the time conscious of the fact; a sympathy that found voice in Zara's heart as well as in mine, and which needed but a touch, as of the spark to grains of powder, to fire it into a blaze of love so absolute as to sweep every other consideration from its path. My heart recognized hers, and I was subconsciously aware that hers recognized mine. It may be that I was playing two parts with her at that moment, the one being that of my ostensible character, as an agent of the czar; the other asserting itself as plain Dan Derrington, an American gentleman who was very much in love.

"Do you suppose, even then, that they would believe you, and spare me?" I asked, with unconcealed irony, forcing myself even against my will, to render my question bitterly offensive.

"Yes, oh, yes! I would give myself as hostage for your honor. My life would be forfeited, too, if you should not keep the oath."

I hesitated. The opportunity was an alluring one in a way, for it would render the entire organization like an open book to me. But more than all else was the communion of interest that would thus be created between this peerless woman and me. Still, there were other things to be considered. The danger I would thus incur might render impotent the entire fabric that I had constructed with so much care; and truth to tell I could not bring myself to the point of utilizing a woman's confidence in order ultimately to betray her and her friends.

"I cannot take the oath, princess," I said, calmly.

"Think! think!" she exclaimed.

"I have thought. I cannot do it."

"Sit down again, Mr. Dubravnik. There is no danger as long as you remain here. I wish to tell you something. I want you to know why I am a nihilist; then, perhaps, you may be of a different opinion."

I obeyed her and she resumed her position on the couch, but her entire manner had undergone another change. The contempt, the scorn, the anger had all died out of her face which now assumed a retrospective expression and when she next addressed me her eyes had in them a dreamy, far away light, as though she were living in the past while she recited the strange tale that thrilled me as nothing else ever had, or ever has done.

"I have heard," she began, "that you yourself have seen some of the horrors of Siberia, but I doubt it. I do not even believe that you are a Russian, and to be perfectly frank I do not believe that your name is Dubravnik. I am of the opinion—and I did not think of it until since the commencement of this interview—that you are not what you seem to be, and that your mission in Russia is in some way connected with the Government police; that you are more than a passive enemy of nihilism—that you are, in short, an active one. If I am right there exists all the more reason why I must appeal to your manhood, your honor, your sense of justice, to your bravery and chivalry. Who are you, Mr. Dubravnik?"

"I am Daniel Derrington, an American, in the service of the czar."

"And therefore connected with the police."

"No. The police do not know me, save as you know me; not even the terrible Third Section."

She scarcely noticed my confession, so absorbed was she by the mere thought of the story she was about to relate.

Her eyes were turned towards the window, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap, her chin was raised, and she seemed to be looking into the past as one might look upon a picture hanging against the wall, observing every detail of it minutely, and yet conscious only of the whole.

"Fancy yourself, a Russian of noble birth, an officer in the army, a favorite at court, the possessor of almost unlimited wealth and happy beyond the dreams of heaven," she said, dreamily. "Search your memory for the picture of a beautiful girl—she was only a girl, not yet twenty, when my story begins—and make this one of whom I speak thrice more beautiful than the picture you delineate. She was your sister. She is your sister. You are her brother in the story I shall relate to you. You two are fatherless and motherless; you are all that is left of your family, once famous, and seemingly destined through you to become so again. You are a favorite with the czar, and your sister is the pet of the royal family. Your influence at court is unlimited. You are on the summit of the wave of favor and popularity. Have you drawn the picture?"

"I endeavor to do so, princess."

"You and Yvonne—she had a French name—reside in the same palace where your fathers lived before you. Your sister is the idol of your heart. You worship her with such devotion that it becomes a maxim quoted by mothers to their sons. You idealize her, and are proud of her; and she is worthy of it all. Ah, sir, follow me with care, for the story will touch you, I believe, as nothing else could do."

Zara left the couch and crossed to the window, where she stood staring through it for a long period of time, so silent, so still, so like a statue in her attitude, that I beheld her with something like awe, while I trembled with eagerness for her to speak again. I must admit that the story she had begun to relate had thus far made no impression upon me, and that it was only the voice of the woman I loved, and the changing expressions of its tone, and her beautiful countenance, which attracted me then. She was so wholly lovable in every attribute of her being; and now, absorbed as she was by the retrospective consideration of the tale she had begun to relate, and because her manner was entirely impersonal, she became even more compelling in her fascinations for me. I forgot, for the moment, that she was a Russian princess and a nihilist, and remembered only the one absorbing fact that she was a woman. My duties in St. Petersburg and the character I had assumed in fulfilling them, the city itself and all my surroundings, the environment of the moment and all that went with it, faded from my mental view, and left us two there, utterly alone in a world of our own, self created by my own conceit of the moment.

I do not know what impulse it was that brought me to my feet with a sudden start of resolve, but I had taken three or four strides toward her, with arms outstretched to seize her lithe form in my embrace, and to crush her against me in a burst of passion which I found myself no longer able to control, when I was startled into motionlessness and silence by a sudden cry from Zara, who turned about and faced me for an instant, and who then seized me by the arm and drew me to the window, pointing into the street as she did so.



CHAPTER XII

WHEN LOVE WAS BORN

The streets of St. Petersburg, the city itself, nihilism, Russia, the czar had ceased to exist for me, however. Whatever she may have seen upon the street that had brought that startled cry to her lips, and had made her turn about and grasp my arm, had also brought into her countenance an expression of such overwhelming and overpowering concern for me, that I knew with a perfect knowledge in that instant, that Zara loved me.

Have you ever been swayed by an impulse that is utterly beyond your control, and before which all other considerations degenerate to such utter insignificance as not to exist at all?

It was such an one that controlled me then.

As she drew me toward the window, and would have directed my gaze through it, her own eyes held unflinchingly to mine, and mine held hers with a compelling power which she did not seek to resist, and could not have controlled, even if she had made the effort.

Whatever it may have been, out there in the street, that had alarmed her, she forgot it, and my arms were around her, her lithe, sinuous, pulsing body was crushed madly against my own, and our lips had met before either of us realized it. We had mutually recognized the strange and overwhelming instinct of love, that had asserted its control over both at the self-same instant. I forgot the world, the flesh and the devil, the czar, Russia, and nihilism, and she forgot even that uppermost terror that was tearing at her heart, in that supreme moment of the rapturous recognition of love.

We were unconscious of the fact that we were standing directly before the window, where we must have been for the moment in full view of persons passing in the street; we had forgotten everything, save each other.

We were both silent; there was no occasion for words; our souls were speaking to each other in a language of their own, God-given and complete, which leaves nothing to be understood, which comprehends all things.

In such supreme moments as that one was, heart speaks to heart with a complete understanding which passeth all human knowledge, and which can be understood only by the two who are most concerned, and by God, who created such impulses.

Presently we were back again beside the low divan. She was seated upon the edge of it, and I was beside her, with one knee on the floor, clasping both her hands in one of mine, while the other still encircled her body, holding her tightly against me in that rhapsody of love which overawes all sense of understanding.

Her head rested lightly upon my shoulder; stray tresses of her hair brushed against my temple and my cheek; her half-parted lips, glowing like newly opened rose-buds, never attained a distance of more than an inch from mine, and for the most part they were together, as lightning conductors of every thrill that pulsed through her being and mine.

When our lips were not in contact, our eyes were; they were gazing into the utmost depths of each other's soul, reading and understanding all that was mutually expressed, charmed and fascinated by the beauteous panoramic scenes which flittered in love-phantoms past our prophetic vision.

"My love! my love!" she murmured over and over again, as if it were all she could utter, and as if with the use of that expression all things were said and done; and I replied as inevitably and comprehensively.

It sounds inane enough in the telling of it, but meaningless phrases and abrupt expressions may, at certain moments in our lives, express everything.

Time became a blank; the world was blotted out; existence was only an incident; we, ourselves, with our bodies, our energies, our capabilities, had become mere atoms in the immensity of that greatest of all God's creations, Love.

There were murderers waiting in the street to do me to death; I thanked God for their presence, since because of it, Zara had been brought to the confession and expression of her love for me. She was a nihilist queen and she had played with the affections of men in order to stupefy them to her purposes, as demanded by the cause she served; but I also thanked God for that, because its consideration and my deep resentment had made plain to me the real power and passion of this abundantly glorious woman, now swayed by only one impulse, love for me.

But, however enthralling they may be, all impulses must have an end. However complete may be love's expression, there is a limit to its continuance; I mean that silent form of expression which proclaims itself only in soul communion.

It was a period of almost utter unconsciousness, since we were both conscious of only one thing while it lasted; but the reaction came at last while she was still relaxed in my embrace, and while yet the mystifying magic induced by contact with her, enveloped me, body and soul.

"Zara," I said, half whispering the word now so unutterably sweet to me, "you will leave Russia now—with me?"

The question brought us both to our senses, with a start, and my princess drew away from me a little, and said, with a whimsical smile:

"A little while ago, my love, you ordered me to leave Russia, alone; now you order me away again, but under guard. I think I will obey you in this last order you have given me. Whenever you will it, I will go."

"And leave behind you all that you have hitherto thought so much about, Zara?" I asked, brought back by her statement to a realization of the conditions by which we were surrounded. She replied without hesitation, and with a finality that was complete:

"Yes."

Ah, what maps of the world have been changed by that word yes. What histories have been written because of its utterance, even in a whispered tone, as hers was then.

"And your nihilists?" I asked her, still intent upon an even more complete capitulation on her part.

"Yes," she repeated.

"And your brother? The cause you have served so intently? The purpose of your life? Everything, Zara?"

"Yes," she said a third time, and still with that same emphasis of finality which could not be misunderstood, and for which there was no qualification.

I was silent and so was she; but after a little I heard her murmuring in a tone so low that it seemed as if I scarcely heard it, notwithstanding the fact that every word was quite distinct.

"I will leave everything for you, my love, for you are all the world to me. There is nothing else now, but you. Nihilism and the cause it upholds, has sunk into utter insignificance, and has become a mere point in the history of my life, like a punctuating period that is placed at the end of a written sentence. Nihilists, great and small, have become mere atoms in the mystery of creation, and they can have no further influence upon my life. The czar of all the Russias is no more a personage to me now, than the merest black dwarf of central Africa, and Russia itself has diminuated to a mere island in the sea of eternity, a speck on the map of the infinite creation. You, Dubravnik——" She paused there and smiled into my eyes with an inimitable gesture of tenderness as she reached upward with her right hand and brushed back the hair from my temples—"I think I shall always call you Dubravnik. The name is yours, as I have known you, and as Dubravnik you are mine, as I am yours."

My reply to this was not a spoken word, and it needs no explanation.

"You, Dubravnik," she continued from the point where she so sweetly interrupted herself, "have become the universe to me, now. You are the infinite space which comprehends all."

It was sweet to hear her express herself so; sweeter still to know, that comprehensive as it was, it went but a little way toward explaining all that she would have liked to say; and sweetest of all to realize that she also exactly expressed my thought toward her, and that she knew she did so.

There was a long silence after that, broken only by her breathing, by a murmured word of caress, by a gesture of endearment or an occasional sigh; but I brought it to an end presently by asking a question which brought her out of her reverie with a start of affright.

"What was it, Zara, that you saw through the window when——" I did not complete the sentence. It was not necessary. She understood me instantly and with the understanding there returned to her a realization of all the terrors by which we were at that moment surrounded. We could love each other with a rhapsodical completeness, in perfect security, so long as we remained together inside that room; but beyond the walls of Zara's palatial home death stalked grimly, waiting, waiting, waiting, for the moment to strike.

She withdrew from my embrace, slowly and tentatively, but surely, until we no longer touched each other, and she gazed appealingly into my eyes while the flush of love forsook her cheeks and brow, giving place to a pallor of uncertainty and dread for me.

"I had forgotten," she murmured.

"Then continue to forget, my Zara," I whispered.

"No, we must not forget; we must remember." She raised her hand and pointed toward the window. "Out there, Dubravnik, death waits for you. I had forgotten. I had forgotten."

With a start she gained her feet and stood for a moment palpitatingly uncertain, clasping and unclasping her hands, while her bosom rose and fell in this stress of an utterly new emotion.

One whom she loved was threatened, now. The maternal instinct of womankind is never more prominent than when it is exercised in the protection of the man she loves, and who is destined to be the father of her offspring. It is a grand and a noble sentiment, and no man lives who will ever comprehend it; but when a man loves as I loved then, he can appreciate its fullness, even though he may not understand it; he can recognize its existence and presence, even though it would be impossible for him to define it.

And it was the maternal instinct that governed her in that moment of terrorized realization of the dangers which threatened me.

I had suddenly become her charge and care. She saw herself as responsible for the conditions that menaced me, and she was like a wild partridge sheltering its brood, and which will not hesitate to face any peril for their protection.

I was always more or less indifferent, if not insensible, to danger. It may not necessarily be bravery that refuses to recognize perils; it may be an instinctive quality of dominance, and self-confidence which is convinced of its power to overcome them.

I rose and stood beside her, putting my arm around her as we faced the window from the opposite side of the room.

"Out there lies danger, Zara," I said smiling, "but here, in this room, dwells happiness."

"There can be no happiness with death waiting for you outside," she said, with sharp decision.

"Zara, my love!"

She wheeled upon me and clasped her hands together behind my neck, looking up at me with trouble-shrouded eyes, and with brows that were slightly corrugated by the perplexities of the moment.

"Listen to me, sweetheart," she said, with her face so close to mine that I had all I could do to refrain from interrupting her. "We must not belittle the perils that lie yonder. There are two lives in danger now, for if anything should happen to you, it would kill me also. I am selfish now, Dubravnik, in my concern for you, for after all it is myself whom I would protect, through you. But we must not belittle the danger. I know that you are brave and daring; that you have no fear. I realize that you view with contempt the perils that beset you, but oh, my love, suppose that you should not escape."

"Why suppose it, Zara? I am here; the danger is there. We need not anticipate it. Let us leave it to be met at the proper moment, forgetting for this once, that it exists."

"No, no, we must control ourselves. We have been children for an hour or more, forgetful of all things save love; but now let us be what we are, a man and a woman who have perils to face."

"And who, I trust, have the courage to meet them, Zara."

"Ay, courage; but courage alone does not always accomplish the sought for end. Courage alone is not inevitably competent to meet and overcome conditions. And we need more than courage, Dubravnik; we need resource."

"Resource is something with which we are both moderately well provided," I suggested, smiling, and still refusing to accept her words as seriously as she intended them.

She stamped her foot impatiently upon the rug, and frowned a little, with a touch of petulance in her manner that was the most bewitching thing I had yet seen about her.

"Do be your own self for a moment," she commanded me, withdrawing from my restraining arm and stepping away out of my reach.

"How can I be myself, when I see and realize only you?" I bantered her.

Then came another transition almost as startling as it was complete.

She threw herself bodily forward into my embrace, clasping her clinging arms about me, while she buried her beautiful face between my chin and shoulder and burst into a passion of sobs which convulsed her so utterly that I was alarmed.

I had tried her too far with my bantering attitude, and my apparent indifference to a threatening and terrible fate.

"Zara!" I said. "My love!"

But she only sobbed on and on, and I held her crushed against me until the storm should pass, knowing that a great calm would succeed it, and that her present expression of emotion was only the safety valve for all that had passed between us since the incident when our lips met for the first time.



CHAPTER XIII

LOVE WILL FIND A WAY

We crossed to the window together, and stood looking through it upon the snow clad streets of the city. The storm of the preceding day and night had entirely cleared away, leaving only the inevitable traces of its violence.

As we stood there, Zara pulled the lace curtains between us and the window, so that we were screened from view, while we were enabled, ourselves, to see with perfect distinctness, up and down the thoroughfare against which her home was fronted.

It might have been a Sunday morning, so peaceful and quiet was the scene, and so purely white was everything, in its covering of snow, while the crisp atmosphere of that cold but brilliant Winter day, sparkled and glinted in the sunshine as if thousands of microscopic diamonds were glistening there.

A solitary policeman passed into our view and out of it again, a britzska rushed past an adjacent corner with the horse at galloping speed; a child played with its father for a moment, within our range of vision, and then disappeared; a fur clad pedestrian ran up the steps of a nearby residence, and passed inside of it; all these trivial incidents of observation, came and went, while we stood there, leaving behind them no impression save one of peace, quiet and security. Yet they impressed themselves upon my memory indelibly, and I can see before me even now, the vision of that afternoon in St. Petersburg, with the clinging right hand of my beloved one resting upon my shoulder, with my left arm about her warm and pulsing body, with love, in all its transcendent qualities, dominating all things real and unreal, and filling my heart, and soul, and my intelligence, with a perfection of blissful content which words cannot describe, and which may never be understood save by him who has experienced it.

What terror had Zara seen through that window, that had startled her so, just before we discovered and confessed our mutual love? Whatever it may have been, no evidence of it remained, to suggest disquiet in my own present sense of security. There was nothing there to menace me, and even though Zara's brother Ivan, and others of his kind, fanatics all, in their nihilistic tendencies, wild beasts in their blood lusts, fiends in their methods, as they were—whatever they might threaten, seemed small indeed to me, in that moment of ecstasy. For it was a moment of ecstasy; the word "moment" being measured by the rule of space, limitless and unconfined.

Zara did not know who and what I was, save only that I was a man, and her lover. Beyond that, her imagination had not travelled, and her desires had not sought.

She did not understand that I was at the head of a great fraternity, organized and established by myself, and that I had under my control, if not obedient to my direct command, several hundred individuals within the limit of that city, who would serve me instantly, and who would fight to the death for me if there were need.

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 cafe, 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.

They would regard me—they must now regard me, as being like other men of their knowledge, who would see in Zara only a beautiful and attractive woman, young and gorgeous, who was suddenly fallen into my power, almost as absolutely as if she were made my slave. What personal sacrifices could I not demand of her, if I were indeed like those other men I have mentioned? What indignities could I not visit upon her, claiming my right to do so as the possessor of her secret, and threatening, not alone her own undoing, but the death of her cause, if she should dare to deny me?