"You do not answer me. You are cold, moody, silent--and yet not unmoved. I wonder of what you are thinking. Yet there can be but one burden of your thoughts. You are mine, Alexis, mine; always, till death--as you have sworn often enough. And after your bravery I love you more than ever. I love a brave man, Alexis. Every brave man. I would give them the kiss of honour. And that you are the bravest of them all is to me the sweetest of knowledge. Yesterday, when I heard how you had humbled that bully, I could do naught but thrill with pride every time I thought of it. It was my Alexis who had done it. Won't you kiss me once as I kissed you a thousand times in thought yesterday?

No? Well, you will before I go. And then I began to think how glad I was that I had made it impossible for you ever to think of giving me up. I know you are brave;--but even the bravest men shudder at the whisper of Siberia."

She paused to give this time to work its effect.

"I wonder how other women love; whether, like me, they think it fair to weave a net round the man they love, strong enough to hold the strongest, wide enough to reach to the Poles, and yet fine enough to be unseen?" She laughed. "I have done this with you, sweetheart. You know how often you have asked me for information and I have got it for you--you have wanted it for the Nihilists. Knowing this I have given it and--you have used it. Once or twice you have told them what was not true, and now you are suspected and in some danger of your life.

But you are guarded also and watched. Two days ago you were at the railway station in private clothes and with your dear face shaven; you were trying to leave Moscow. But you probably saw the uselessness of the attempt and gave it up. Had you really tried, you would have been stopped. Do you think you can hope to escape from me? Do you think you can break through the net-work of the most wonderful police system the world ever knew? Psh! Do not dream of it. Moscow is a fine, large, splendid city. But Moscow is also a prison; and the man who would seek to break out of it, but dashes his breast against the drawn sword of implacable authority."

"You have a pleasant humour, and a light touch in your methods of wooing," said I, bitterly. She had made a great impression on me.

"The wooing is complete, Alexis. It was your work. I do but guard against being deceived. Escape from Moscow being hopeless for you, you have only to remember that a word from me in my husband's ear will open for you the dumb horrid mouth of a Russian dungeon which will either close on you for ever, or let you out branded, disgraced, and manacled to start on the long hopeless march to Siberia."

I had rather admired the woman before; now I began to hate her. I could not fail to see the truth behind her words; and a flash of inspiration shewed me now that the safest course I could take was to shake off the character I had so lightly a.s.sumed. But her next words bared the impossibility of that.

"Do you think now it is safe to break away from me? But that is not all. There is another consideration. You have drawn your sister into these Nihilist snares. You know how she is compromised. I know it too. There are more dungeons than one in Russia. If you were in one, I would see to it that she, who has scorned and flouted and insulted me, was in another; with her chance also of a jaunt across the plains."

The flippancy of this last phrase was a measure of her hate.

The thought of the poor girl's danger beat me. What this woman said was all true--d.a.m.nably, horribly, sickeningly true.

"Have you planned all this?" I asked, when I could bring myself to speak calmly.

"No, no, Heaven forbid. I had not a thought of it in all my heart; not a thought, save of love and a desire to shield you from any real danger that threatened you, till,"--and her voice changed suddenly--"yesterday, when you loosed all the torrents that can flow from a jealous woman's heart. I am a woman; but I am a Russian."

She was lying now, for she was contradicting what she had said just before.

"My sister's fate is nothing to me," I said, callously. "She has made her bed, let her lie on it. But as for myself"--I had but one possible to seem to yield--"I care nothing. I am not the coward you once thought me, and my meeting with Devinsky shews you that clearly enough.

But I doubted your love when I found you did not answer to the test I made."

"You do not doubt it now. I am here at the risk of my life; at the risk of both our lives," she said, her eyes aflame with feeling as she hung on my deliberately spoken words.

"This morning has been a further test, and I should not be a sane man if I doubted you now, or ever again."

"Then kiss me, Alexis."

She sprang from her chair and threw herself into my arms, loading me with wild tempestuous caresses, like a woman distraught with pa.s.sion.

I hated myself even while I endured it; and nothing would have made me play so loathesome and repugnant a part but the thought that Olga's safety demanded it.

She was still clinging about me, calling me by my name, caressing me, upbraiding me for my coldness, and chiding me for having put her to such a test, when a loud knock at the door of the room disturbed us both.

It was my discreet servant Borlas; the loudness of his knock being the measure of his discretion.

He said that my sister was waiting to see me.

CHAPTER VII.

A LESSON IN NIHILISM.

I was not a little annoyed that so soon after Olga had warned me against the wiles of Paula Tueski, she should come just when my most unwelcome lover was in my rooms--and at such a moment. But I thrust aside my irritation--which was not against Olga--and went to her, curious to learn what had brought her to visit me.

She told me in a few sentences. A friend had been to warn her that I was in danger from the Nihilists and that unless I took the greatest care, I should be a.s.sa.s.sinated. The poor girl was all pale and agitated with alarm on my account, and had rushed off to hand the warning on to me. She was half hysterical. She wanted me to fly at once, to claim the protection of the British Consulate; to proclaim my ident.i.ty and get away even before my pa.s.sport came from her brother.

"There is not the danger you fear, Olga," I said, rea.s.suringly. "I shall find means to avoid it. But I want to speak to you about another matter. Paula Tueski is here"--my sister shrank back and looked at me with a hard expression on her face such as I had not seen there in all our talks. Evidently she hated the woman cordially. "You are right in your estimate of her in one respect, and for the moment she has beaten me. Much as I dislike the business, we must manage to blind her eyes and tie her hands for the moment--or I for one see none but bad business ahead."

"How comes she to be here?" asked Olga, in a voice of suppressed anger.

"I will tell you all that another time," I answered, speaking hurriedly and in a very low tone. "Another point has occurred to me. She is very bitter against you and has been urging your brother to get you to receive her. This was to have been done last night. My apparent refusal to speak to her at all came as a crowning insult, and she was mad. There is one way in which I think we might the more easily deceive her, if you can bring yourself to do it. Come in now and let me present her to you: or let me go and tell her that you will call on her."

"Will it make things safer for you?" she asked, always thinking of the trouble into which she would persist in saying she had brought me.

"It would make them safer for you, I think."

"I care nothing for myself. She can't harm me. Do you wish it? Do you think it desirable? I will do it if you say yes." She spoke so earnestly that I smiled... Then she added:--"Ah, it is so good to have someone that I can trust. That's why I leave it to you."

"I don't wish it," I answered, gravely, "because she is the reverse of a good woman, but I do think it would be prudent."

"Let's go to her at once," cried the girl, getting up from her chair readily. "We can talk afterwards. That's the one privilege...." she checked herself and then coloured slightly. I pretended not to notice it; but this absolute confidence pleased me not a little.

"Bear in mind, we are only playing a part with this woman," I whispered.

"I know. She is too dangerous for me ever to forget that, or to play badly." She dashed a glance of quick understanding at me and then seemed to change suddenly into a Russian grande dame. An indescribable air of distinction manifested itself in a hundred little signs, and she carried herself like a stately d.u.c.h.ess, as we entered the room where Paula Tueski sat waiting impatiently.

A great glad light of triumph leapt into the latter's eyes as she saw Olga was with me, and she, too, drew herself up as I made the two formally known to each other. It was a delightful bit of comedy. Olga was full of quite stately regrets that she had not had the pleasure of knowing the other long before: said that her brother's friends were, of course, her friends; and that she hoped to call that week on Madame Tueski and that Madame would find an opportunity of returning the visit speedily. She made such an appearance of unbending to the other, that the difference between them was all the more p.r.o.nounced.

Madame Tueski on her side was too full of the seeming triumph over us to be able to be natural with my sister; and she alternately gushed and froze as she first tried to captivate and then would remember that Olga was only consenting through compulsion to know her. The result was as ridiculous as an episode could be beneath which lurked such possibilities of tragedy.

It lasted only a few minutes when I suggested, and I had a purpose, that the two should leave the house together. I wished to get rid of Paula Tueski without further love-making: and desired in addition that if there were any spies about the house they should see the two together, so that if any tales were carried to the Chief of the Police they should be innocent ones.

"I will call later in the day if possible," I promised Olga, as she left.

"Ugh, how I hate her;" was the whispered reply, inconsequential but very feminine. And I shut the door on the two and went back to my room to think out this new set of most complicated problems.

Paula Tueski's visit had changed everything; and I saw it would be foolish not to look that fact straight in the face. I could not see how things would end; but certainly flight, for the time, was simply impossible. For myself, I did not much care. I had had a few hours of excitement which had completely drawn me out of the morbid mood in which I had arrived in Moscow; and nothing had happened to make me much more anxious to live than I had been then.

Life might have been endurable enough, if I could have gone on with my army career as Lieutenant Petrovitch; but not if the abominable and disgraceful intrigue were to be added as a necessary condition. That would be unendurable: and had I been a free agent, I would have ended the whole thing there and then, by admitting the deception and putting up with the results. Indeed, it occurred to me that in a country like Russia, where I knew that courage stood for much and military skill for more, the reputation I had managed to make would be likely enough to tell in my favour if I told the truth and asked leave to volunteer.

But was I a free agent?

Look at the thing as I would I could see no means by which I could get out of the mess, even taking my punishment, without leaving my sister in deep trouble. If Paula Tueski found that I had humbugged her and that Olga was in the plot, it was as plain as a gallows that she would be simply mad and would wreak her spite on the girl.

Could I leave Olga to this? The words of confidence she had spoken were still echoing in my ears--and very pleasant music they made--and could I quietly save my own skin and leave her in the lurch? It was not likely that I should do anything of the sort; and I didn't entertain it for a moment as a possibility. The girl had trusted to me; and I must make her safety the first consideration of any plan I formed.

But how?

I could see only one way. It was that she should get out of Moscow, and indeed out of Russia altogether. It was not probable that the woman Tueski would place any obstacle in the way, provided I did not attempt to leave as well; and I came to the conclusion that the best possible course would be for Olga to take her departure at once. She could go and join her brother in Paris, or wherever he had gone; and then I could carry on alone the play, farce, burlesque, comedy, or tragedy, as it might prove.