You laugh wildly, insanely, as you brush the servant aside, and dash from the house in pursuit.

"'The czar is my friend! He is her friend! He will save her!' That is what you cry aloud as you run along the streets towards the palace, forgetting your _britzska_, in your haste, and agony. You forget that you have been suspended from attendance at the palace, and that the guards have been ordered not to admit you, but you are made to remember it when you arrive. They stop you. You cannot get past them. In vain you tell them of the arrest of your sister, and that you must see the emperor, but you only give them an added reason for keeping you out.

They order you away. You refuse to go. They attempt to force you, and you strike one of them, knocking him down."

"Then all your pent up agony is loosed. You have the strength of a dozen men. You scatter the guards around you like flies, and rush past them, straight for the cabinet of the emperor, where you have always been a welcome guest. You tell yourself that he loves you--that he loves your sister; that as soon as he hears the truth, he will correct the awful wrong that has been done; that the men who outraged the sanct.i.ty of your sister's sleeping room, will be punished. Ah! You do not know the czar--that man whom you call your friend; who is G.o.d's and man's worst enemy!

"But you are soon to know him better. You are soon to discover what manner of man it is to whom you have given your soul and body, your allegiance and your worship, all the years of your life. You are soon to know--and oh, how bitter is the awakening.

"You dash unannounced into his presence. In a wild torrent of words, you pour forth the awful tale. You laugh, you cry; you implore, you demand; he only frowns, or smiles derisively. You rave; he calls the guard. You find that he _does_ know; that others have been there before you, and that the letter supposed to have been found in the possession of your sister, has already been read by him. With horror, you realize that he believes--that there is no hope for the sister you love so tenderly, who was placed in your arms by your dying mother; whom you swore to guard, and protect.

"That terrible man, who commits thousands of murders by proxy every year, frowns upon you, who have been almost like a son to him. He sneers at your agony. He believes all that has been told to him against your sister--he is even willing to believe that you are a party to her supposed misdeeds.

"'Forget your sister. She is dead to you, and to me,' his majesty commands you, coldly. 'I can forgive you for your present excitement.

Forget her.'

"FORGET HER!! G.o.d! Forget your sister? Forget the little girl who was put into your arms when a child? Forget the glowing, gorgeous, beautiful young woman she has become? Then you loose another torrent of words. You curse your emperor. You revile the sacred person of the czar. You go mad; you even try to strike him. Ah! It is awful, your agony. The guard seizes you. The straps are torn from your shoulders.

The b.u.t.tons are cut from your coat. The czar himself uses his great strength to break your sword across his knee, and so far forgets his dignity that he strikes you in the face with his open hand; and then you are hustled to the palace gate, and thrust into the street, disgraced, helpless, insane." Zara paused an instant, then continued, monotonously:

"Then begins months of hopeless waiting. Every day you beg admittance to the palace. Every day you are refused. You write letters, begging that you may be told where your sister is detained, that you may go to her; that you may share her exile. They are unheeded. You know that she is in Siberia, but Siberia is a vast place--greater than all Europe.

You pet.i.tion men and officers who used to fawn upon you when you were in favor, for information concerning her. They will not even speak to you. They have been ordered not to do so. At last, when nearly five months have pa.s.sed in this way, friendless and alone, for your property has been taken from you, you join the nihilists."

Zara crossed to the divan and seated herself beside me, clasping one of my hands in hers, and clinging to it as if she were herself in danger of being torn from my side, or of losing me. For a time she pressed my hand between hers, or stroked it gently, and when she resumed speech, it was in a softly-spoken voice.

"Then you find friends," she said, gently. "Through their agents, the nihilists ascertain where your sister has been taken. You learn that she is a prisoner on the unspeakably horrible island of Saghalien. Yes, and they tell you more, these new friends and helpers whom you have found among the nihilists. They know about the plot that sent her there. They know that the very man who pretended that he loved Yvonne, bribed one of your servants to place those awful papers among her things, that they might be found there by the police. You search for him, but he is abroad, so you seek out, and find, the servant who was bribed; and him, you strangle. After that, you disappear. The nihilists report that you are dead. St. Petersburg believes it. But you are not dead. You are on your way to Saghalien. Your new friends a.s.sist you with disguises; they aid you on your long journey; they provide you with money; and somehow--you never know how--you reach Saghalien, only to find that Yvonne is not there; that she has been transferred. Then you begin a weary search which consumes months; so many of them, that they swell into two long years. You go from prison to prison, from town to town, from hope to despair, from despair to hope, and at last--YOU FIND HER!"

Zara dropped to her knees before me. I knew that the climax of her story was at hand. Her beautiful eyes, widened, and speaking dumbly of infinite sorrow, sought mine, and held them. I bent forward, and kissed her on the forehead. Then she resumed:

"You find her in a far away prison in the north. You find her half clothed, lost to all sense of modesty, the sport, the victim, the THING of the inhuman brutes who are her guards. You find her body; her beautiful soul has fled. She is not dead, but she gazes at you with a vacant stare of unrecognition. She laughs at you when you tell her that you are her brother. She does not know you. She has forgotten her own name. She taunts you with being another brute, like the men she has known there, in that foul haunt of unspeakable vices. Then you go quite mad. You clasp her in your arms, and draw her slender body against you.

When you release her, she falls at your feet, dead, for you have buried your knife in her heart. Never again will she be the sport of brutal men. You have dealt out mercy to your suffering sister, and the agony you have endured gave you the necessary strength of will. You are G.o.d's agent in the deed."

I could feel that Zara was shuddering with the horror of the scene she had described; not at the deed of that brother who stabbed his sister to death to save her, but because of the awful fate of that poor girl, which the tragic act of her brother brought to an end. I drew Zara tenderly into my arms, and held her so for a long time, while she wept softly, with her head pillowed against my shoulder; and after a time she resumed, haltingly:

"When you turned away from your tragic deed of mercy, you killed the guard who tried to stop you. You made your escape; how, you do not remember; but you found your way back here--here, to St. Petersburg.

n.o.body recognized you. Your hair was white, your face was the face of a corpse. You had one more purpose; the death of two men, the czar and the conspirator. And so you went again to your friends, the nihilists.

Hush! I am not through yet. There is more--much more, much more!"

CHAPTER XVI

THE MOMENT OF VENGEANCE

Zara's intensity of pa.s.sion during her dramatic recital, had imparted itself to me, so that when she ceased speaking for a moment, I felt myself glowing and throbbing with all the excitement that absorbed her.

It seemed almost as if I were, indeed, the person who was concerned in the story she had related, and my nerves were strung to the point where I felt that I could go out and kill the czar for the wrongs that had been committed in his name; if not at his connivance, certainly with his permission, and with the presumption of his approval. She withdrew from me and crossed to the window, where she stood looking out upon the snow clad street; suddenly she started, and turned to me. How beautiful she was and how I loved her at that moment!

"Come here, Dubravnik," she said. I obeyed, and in an instant was at her side at the window.

"What is it?" I asked.

"There; look yonder. Do you see that _karetta_, just beyond the corner?"

"Yes. I see it."

"It has all the appearance of waiting for a pa.s.senger who is supposedly within one of the adjacent houses, has it not?"

"It certainly has," I replied, smiling.

"My love, I recognize that _karetta_, and the man in charge of it. It belongs to--never mind whom. That does not matter. But the man incased in fur, who seems to be the driver, is a nihilist; within the enclosure, there is certainly one, and possibly there are two more men.

Each of them has sworn to take your life at the cost of his own, if need be. They will wait there until you leave me. Then they will do their work. Do you still doubt that you have been sentenced to death?"

"I have not doubted it, sweetheart."

"But do you doubt their ability to carry out the decree?"

"I do."

"Ah, Dubravnik, you little know the men with whom we have to deal."

How sweet it was to hear her include herself with me, against them.

"They are like bloodhounds on a trail. They never leave it, nor tire.

They are indefatigable. When one falls, another takes his place. They number thousands, and you are one."

"WE are one," I corrected her, smiling. "I do not doubt their intentions, but I have not lived till now, and found you, to be killed by the nihilists."

She gazed at me a moment in silence, and then, slowly, she added:

"Do not think that I sought to frighten you by what I just said. I already know you much too well for that. My intention was to warn you."

"I understood you, dear, perfectly."

She turned away from the window again and faced me, and her eyes were glowing with the light of love. Again for the moment we were face to face with the perils that menaced us from the outside, and before that consideration, all else faded to nothingness with Zara. A little while ago she had repudiated me, but all-conquering Love had stepped in again, had overpowered her, enthralled her, and I could see that she was more than ever mine own, now.

For a s.p.a.ce we looked into each other's eyes across the short distance that separated us. We were reading each other's souls, and both saw and understood all that the heart of love could desire. It was an undiscovered country to each of us, upon which we trod just then; a new creation that was the sweeter because of its strangeness.

"I love you!" Zara whispered; and she came nearer until her hands rested upon my shoulders, until her face was close to mine so that I could feel her sweet breath against me. Her lips were parted slightly in a half smile, and I knew that she had forgotten the waiting _karetta_ with its freight of a.s.sa.s.sins.

I took her in my arms, slowly, tenderly, firmly. I held her pressed closely against me for a moment and then my lips sought hers, and hers sought mine. It was a oneness of desire, a singleness of purpose that brought us together in the kiss of perfect love; and we remained so while minutes sped. I closed my eyes and held her the more tightly against me, so that I could feel the throbbing of her heart and the quivering eagerness of her lithe body, warm against my own. We forgot the dangers and perils that surrounded us; forgot the world and all it contained; forgot life and death, czars and their empires, nihilists and their plots, remembering nothing, in that great spasm of adoration.

We did not speak. There was no occasion for words. There came no opportunity to utter them. But we breathed, and breathed together. Our hearts throbbed in unison. Our souls communed, intermingled, blended into one. We sighed together, thought together, until my own senses reeled under the strain of it, and I knew that Zara was more than half unconscious of all things save her present contact with me. Ah, heaven, the greatness of it! The magnificence of that moment! The rapture of her caress, and the great joy of mine to her!

Presently I felt her clinging arms relax and I guided her tenderly toward a huge chair. I lifted her as if she were a child and put her softly down among the cushions; and I dropped to my knees, still holding her, still with my arms wound tightly around her.

For a long time after that we were silent, and Zara was the first to rouse from our mutual revery.

"Dubravnik," she said, and you can have no idea how sweetly that name was made to sound by her utterance of it, "I have not yet completed the story I was telling you; but there is only a little more, and you must hear it."

"Yes," I replied. "As you will, Zara. I am content. But need we go more deeply into the sorrows of that poor girl and her suffering brother? Let us rather talk of the great joy that has come to us.

There seems to be nothing but joy in the world, when I look into your eyes. Ah, little one, it is sweet indeed to be loved by you."