"It will be far better for me to come some other time," I said, anxious to leave.
"You will have plenty of opportunities, never fear," she retorted, with a very angry sneering laugh. "And what is more, you will not dare not to use them. Listen—it is love for you drives me to this—a love that you can never escape now, Alexis, even if you had the will."
She paused; but I said nothing. I had nothing to say. All I wished was to get away.
"Do you think there is anything I would not do for your love, Alexis? I have told you there is nothing—told you so scores of times. Now, I have proved it. Do you hear—proved it. I proved it a few nights ago when this hand plunged the dagger hilt deep into my husband's heart—for your sake."
I started back and looked at the woman in horror.
"Yes, this hand"—she held it out—"so white, smooth, deft, and shapely. Don't start from it. There is no blood shewing on it now. And never was. I know how to thrust a dagger home too cleverly to leave a trace of either blood or guilt on me. In all this Moscow of ours the one person who is deemed above all others guiltless—is myself. Had it been in reality the Nihilist deadly secret stroke that men deem it, it could not have been more cunningly contrived, more secretly planned, more fatally executed. Yet the motive was not hate of a Government, but love for a man. For you, Alexis: you and you only. Now do you wish to go?"
She moved away from the door; but I made no attempt to go. The horror of her story had fascinated me.
"There was a tinge of hate in it, too, mark you, and more than a tinge. But I'll tell you all. You ought to know, since you were in reality the cause of all. You gave me the motive, suggested the occasion, and provoked that which led to it. More than that, too, you can by a single word from me be made to bear the brunt. Now, will you go?"
Was the woman mad that she spoke in this way? If so, there was a devilish method in her madness, as the story she told quickly shewed me.
"I knew the day would come when either I should kill him or he would kill me; for he was a devil. Well, you roused all that was most evil, vicious, and fiendish in him in that interview; and when I saw him he was like a man bereft of his wits. Every form of reproach he could heap on me in cold, contemptuous, galling sneers he uttered with all the calculated aggravation that could make a taunt unbearable. He threatened me in every tone of menace: and when I answered, turned suddenly furious and struck me violent blows and vowed to kill me. It was then I recalled your words, that there was a Nihilist plot against his life; and I vowed I would be the means of carrying it out; for I knew I could easily put suspicion away from me. I lured him cunningly to that part of the house where he was found, plunged the dagger into his breast, put into his pocket the forged warning of a Nihilist attack, opened the house at a point where a man could have entered, fastened to the dagger the Nihilist watchword, and then crept away to my own rooms."