I looked up into her radiant face, now fired with her passion.
“One touch of your lips, if only to ease my suffering.”
The ruby colour flowed rich and deep over her face, and, bending forward, she kissed me on the forehead.
“Go, in pity for me, go,” she cried, excitedly.
One moment longer I stood, gazing at her with my soul in my eyes, feasting my senses on the signs of her love, and then I tore myself away. A last glance as I left the room showed me that she had thrown herself back in her chair with her hands clasped in front of her face.
I rushed back to my house, my head bewildered and dizzied with the sweet delirium of her avowed love, and I sat like a crazy loon for hours, running over and over again in thought all the incidents of the scene.
She loved me. Nothing could rob me of the sweetness of that knowledge. All else that could happen was as nothing compared to that. The plot might succeed or fall; she loved me. Bulgaria might be free or enslaved; she loved me. The Russians might triumph or fail; she loved me. It was the one balm for every sorrow, one true note of joy in every trial: she loved me; and I was mad with the delight of it all.
In the early evening Spernow came to me; and then I remembered with an effort—for all memory was swallowed up in the one delicious remembrance of her love avowal—that I had promised to go out with him. I did not care whether I went or stayed; what I said or did, all was alike indifferent to me; but when he urged me, I dressed and went with him. As we drove along he said something, however, which brought my intoxicated wits together.
“Duke Sergius will be here to-night, Count. We shall see what he means to do.” I laughed so loudly that he looked at me in surprise. What cared I for the Duke Sergius? I carried a charmed life, for Christina loved me. He might marry her: but it was I had her heart. If he killed me, he could not alter that. And whether I lived or died mattered nothing now. I hoped he would quarrel with me. “To be married in three days.” Marriages are not made with the dead, my lord Duke, I thought, and laughed again.
“If he wants to quarrel he will find me ready enough,” I said, boastfully and noisily; but before I entered the house I had put a restraint upon myself and wore my usual reserve, covering up that mad, wild, whirling passion that was heating every vein in my body. I soon saw, too, there was a cause to be wary.