I shook my head with emphasis, brought back suddenly to the intent of her words.

"It is impossible, Zara," I said.

"You must do it, Dubravnik."

"No."

"I say that you must do it. You must take the oath. You must become a nihilist. It is the only way. I will send a servant from the house, with a message which will bring two or three of the leaders here, and you shall take the oath."

She started to her feet again, reaching toward the bellcord, and I had to spring after her, and seize her arm, in order to restrain the act she was about to commit.

"No, Zara," I said, and forced her gently back to the couch, compelling her to be seated, and this time dropping down beside her, and putting my arm around her. "No, Zara, not that. I cannot take the oath. It is utterly impossible. It is much more impossible now, than it was before."

"Why?" she asked, in surprise.

"Because I love you, dear."

"Ah," she said smiling, "as if that were not a greater reason for your taking it, instead of denying it."

"No, Zara," I said again. "I cannot take the oath of nihilism. I have already taken an oath which thoroughly obviates such a possibility."

"Another oath, Dubravnik?"

"Yes."

"To whom?"

"To the czar."

"Oh," she exclaimed, and she shuddered. "I had forgotten that you were in the service of his majesty." I thought that she drew away from me at that, but the motion was so slight as to be almost imperceptible. "I had forgotten all that about you, Dubravnik." Again there was a shudder, now more visible than before. "You are under oath to the czar; to the man, who, because he permits so many wrongs to happen I have learned to hate." She straightened her body. "And Dubravnik I can hate quite as forcibly as I can love."

"I do not doubt it," I said.

"You must take the oath. You must take it. You shall repudiate that other one to the czar."

"It cannot be, Zara."

"It must be! It shall be!"

"No," I said; and there was such calm finality, such forcible emphasis in the monosyllable I used, that she drew still farther away from me, shuddering again as she did so, and I saw her face grow colder in its expression, although I did not believe that it was caused by any change in her att.i.tude toward me.

"Can nothing move you, Dubravnik? Can nothing change you from this purpose of yours? Must you, because you have given your word to a tyrant, remain loyal to him? Must you, in spite of the great love you have for me, remain true to him who is my enemy?"

"I must; for your sake as well as for mine."

"For my sake!" she laughed, and it was not a pleasant laugh to hear, especially at that moment, and following as it did upon all the tenderness that had pa.s.sed between us. "For my sake! Why Dubravnik, it is for my sake that I ask you to take the oath."

"Zara," I said, choosing my words deliberately, "last night in the gla.s.s covered garden, where the colored lights were glowing, I heard you utter words which I can never forget, and which I have thought upon many times since I heard them. You repudiated, with all the intensity of your soul, the methods which these nihilists employ to attain their ends. You called them murderers, a.s.sa.s.sins, scoundrels, cutthroats, defamers of character, and many other things which I need not name.

What you did not accuse them of, in words, you charged them with, by implication; and now you ask me to become one with them; and not only that, to deny my manhood and my honor by repudiating my oath to another."

"I asked you to protect yourself and me," she said, simply, but with a coldness and a suggestion of hardness in her tone, that had been entirely absent from it until that instant.

"I will do that, Zara. I will save you, and I will save myself. I will save you from yourself. There will be a way. I have not yet determined upon what it will be, but I will find a means."

Suddenly she slipped to the floor, upon her knees before me, and with clasped hands upraised, in an att.i.tude of supplication, she cried aloud in a very agony of intensity.

"Oh, my love, do as I ask you to do. Take the oath of nihilism."

CHAPTER XIV

THE SCORN OF A WOMAN

It seemed at that moment as if I could not deny her. Every impulse of my soul cried out to me that it would be a very little thing to do, after all.

It was not the danger which threatened, that influenced me, not at all that; it was her own supplication. The danger, and our own necessities, were very real for her, even if I, in my secret heart, made little of them.

For a moment I think I was undecided, but then the full force of what such an act would mean, the full realisation of what I would become in my own eyes by so stultifying myself, brought me back to energy, and I reached forward, grasping her, and drew her to her feet; I rising, also.

"Zara," I said with deliberation, "once and for all, and for the last time, we must not discuss such a thing. If I should take the oath of nihilism, if I should even consider doing so, I could not look into my mirror, save with horror. I am a man in the employ of his majesty, the czar. I have given him my word of honor, as an American gentleman, to do and perform certain things, and I will and must do and perform them all. I should say, too, that he did not seek me, but that I sought him.

That is to say, he did not seek me with any knowledge on my part that he did so, and I sought him while I was entirely ignorant that he even guessed at my intent. Seeking him, I was brought into contact with him.

I have found him to be a man who is worthy of much admiration; a man for whom I have infinite respect and esteem, notwithstanding the charges you make against him, and the things of which you deem him guilty." She made a gesture of repulsion, but I took no notice of it, and went on. "I find now, Zara, in the light of what has occurred here between us, and in the glory of our great love, that I must tell you who and what I am, and how it happens that I am here with you, at this moment." She bowed her head in acknowledgment of my statement, but made no reply in words. She had changed wonderfully in the last few minutes, and she was cold now, and distant, shocked, I thought, by this new difficulty that had come between us at the very moment of our greatest happiness. "I am Daniel Derrington, an American. I have been, for many years in the past, in the service of my government as a diplomatic agent and secret service officer; something very much after the character of what you would call over here, a spy. Yet, in my country, Zara, we have no spies, as you understand the term. My employment has been an honorable one, and no man can defame it." She shrugged her shoulders, and I went on rapidly. "In the operation of my duties, I have visited St. Petersburg several times. From a distance, and as an observer only, I have studied nihilism and the nihilist. Some time ago, a friend of mine whose name perhaps you will recognize, came to me and made a suggestion, which, having followed, has ended by my being here."

"Who was that man?" she asked.

"Alexis Saberevski."

She nodded.

"I know him," she said simply.

"In coming to St. Petersburg and seeking audience with his majesty, acting thereby under the suggestion made by my friend, I proposed to the czar the organization of a certain band of men whose duty it has been, and is, and will continue to be until it is successful, to drive organized nihilism out of Russia."

"You can never do that," said Zara, with fine contempt.

"I can do it. It shall be done."

She tore herself from my grasp and leaped to her feet, darting across the room and placing the table between us, with a motion so quick that she was beyond my reach before I could detain her. I had expected from her violent action, an outburst of words; but it did not come. Instead, she stood calmly beyond the table, leaning gently upon it with one hand, and gazed across the s.p.a.ce that separated us, while she said, coolly, and not without contempt:

"Complete your story, Dubravnik. It interests me. I shall be glad indeed to hear it, finding as I now do, that I have permitted myself to fall in love with a professional spy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I HAVE PERMITTED MYSELF TO FALL IN LOVE WITH A PROFESSIONAL SPY" (Page 208)]

G.o.d! how her tone hurt me! How the words she uttered pierced me! How the contemptuous scorn in her voice and manner, tore to shreds the fabric of a beatific existence I had created in my imagination! A moment ago, confident of her love, her admiration, and her esteem, I saw now, when it was too late, that the very announcement of my profession had destroyed it, with a stroke as deadly as the knife of an a.s.sa.s.sin in the heart of his victim.

And I understood, also, why my statement should have had such an effect upon her. Reared as she had been, in the society of St. Petersburg; taught from her cradle to hate and despise, as well as to fear, a spy; educated in utter abhorrence of everything that pertains to that cla.s.s, at the Russian capital, she could look upon me, now, only with horror and loathing. I was that thing she had most despised. I was that monstrosity of creation, which, calling itself a man, was, according to Zara's lights, without princ.i.p.al, honor, integrity, or manhood.