And behold! Tioka got better. This chance coincidence assumed in my diseased brain the character of a direct answer from heaven. The sacrifice had been accepted!
A year later, when I stood before the judges who were to sentence me, no word of this delusion passed my lips. Demented though I was, I knew myself to be demented; I knew that this idea of a barter with heaven was an insensate idea; and yet, by some fallacy of my hallucinated brain, I believed—do I not even now believe it?—that my vow had been heard, that my word must be kept, that one life must be bought with the other.
Even so, better, far better would it have been to let my child's white soul flutter heavenwards, than to retain it with my blood-stained hand.
But at that time my one thought was to save him, even though for his life, not one, but a thousand others had been immolated.
The day came when I was able to carry him in my arms from his cot to an easy chair beside the window. What a joy was that brief transit! His frail arms were round my neck and his head lay on my shoulder. With slow, lingering steps I went, loth to leave him out of my embrace.
A sweet Italian verse came light and fragrant into my memory:
I thought I bore a flower within my arms...
It was Prilukoff who reminded me with a cynical smile that the vow included also Nicolas Naumoff.
Nicolas Naumoff! I had almost forgotten him. Nicolas Naumoff! Must he, this distant and forgotten stranger, also die?
I cannot tell which of us it was who conceived the idea of making use of him as our instrument—of destroying him by making him a weapon of destruction, of murdering him by making him a murderer.