"It was a hellish plot," I exclaimed, hotly.
"It was inspired by love for you, Alexis. It was truly 'For Freedom's sake.' Freedom that should unite us for ever."
"Do you think I could ever be anything to a woman whose hand is red with murder?" I cried, in indignant horror.
"It was done for you—for love of you, Alexis."
"Love has no kin with murder," I exclaimed, bitterly.
"Your life is mine, remember," she answered, firmly. Her determination and strength were inexhaustible. "This makes you ten thousand times more surely mine than ever. I told you you were the cause—and also, that you could be made to bear the brunt. Listen! You know well enough what chance a Nihilist has on whom the fangs of suspicion have fastened. You are a Nihilist. Your sister is one also. I know this. Well, what chance, think you, would that Nihilist have of his life whose dagger it was that found its way between my husband's ribs. What then, if I had found the sheath of it and secreted it to save the man? Suppose too, that I had kept back the discovery because of my guilty love for him. And further that he had come at the time to tempt my honour and that he was leaving the house when my husband, roused by the noise I made, met him; and that I saw the deed done?" She paused and changed her tone to one of fierce directness, as she continued:—"The dagger that killed Christian Tueski is your own weapon, known by its sheath to a hundred people: and that sheath, with your name on it, is in my possession. What chance of life would there be for you and yours if these things were made known. Now, do you wish to go?"
A hot and passionate reply rose to my lips, but was checked before uttered. I thought of Olga, and I knew that every word this woman said was true—that no power in Russia could save my life or Olga's liberty if the tale were told now.
Delay I must have at any cost. Time in which to meet this woman's horrible cunning and daring plot. If I had hated her before, she was now loathsome; while the fears she had stirred on Olga's account intensified and embittered a thousandfold my resentment. Yet hateful as the task was, I was prepared to continue my part with her.
"You think this love?" I said, after a pause in which she had been waiting breathlessly for me to speak. "Do women love the men they hold to them by the tether rope of threats?"
"Do women kill for the sake of men they do not love?"