Then I bent towards him, and a thrill such as I have never felt passed through me. “Swear—on the dead—that you will kill that man.”
“I swear it,” he gasped. “Terrible woman that you are, I swear it.”
“Go,” I whispered. “Go ... at once.” But he sprang towards me and fastened his lips upon mine.
Amid all the horrors that haunt my memory, all the spectral visions which drift darkly through the labyrinth of my life, that frenzied embrace among the tombs in the crepuscular cemetery, still rises before me—a ghost of darkness and of shame.
He turned and left me. I heard his footsteps running along the gravel path, I saw his tall shadowy figure vanish in the gloom.... He was gone.
I was alone in the nocturnal churchyard, alone by Stahl's desolate grave.
“Nicolas Naumoff!” I cried. But no one answered me, and fear ran into my heart with thudding steps.
I hurried forward, down the narrow path bordered with tombs and turned to the right, down another wider avenue among other endless rows of the dead.... Where was I? In which direction lay the gate?... I turned and ran back. I must find Stahl's grave again, and then go to the left through the unconsecrated burial-ground of those who had died by their own hand.... With shuddering breath I stumbled forward, but nowhere could I find the dreary field of the unshriven dead. Tall sepulchers and mausoleums loomed dimly on either side of me, limitless rows of tombstones and statues ... but Stahl's low, dreary mound was nowhere to be seen. Stay—behind the willows on the right, was that not the white cross standing on my mother's grave?... To reach it quickly I left the pathway and ran diagonally across the burial ground trampling the graves in my haste to reach that large cross shimmering in the gloom.... No, it was not my mother's grave. But further on, and further, other crosses glimmered and beckoned—and I ran on, crazed and terror-stricken, stumbling over mounds and hillocks, tripping in iron railings, trampling over flowers and wreaths ... until I fell in the darkness and lay unconscious and silent amid the silent and unconscious dead.
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A breath of soft morning air awoke me. I opened my eyes. Elise was bending over me with pale and anxious face. The room—my bedroom—whirled and swam before my dizzy sight.