“Nothing shall persuade me to be such a coward.”
“Well, let us argue it out,” I answered.
But there was to be no chance of doing that; for as I was speaking Colonel Petrosch and the Major entered the room.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
“I CANNOT LEAVE MY COUNTRY.”
The black tragedy of the night had scored its mark deep on Colonel Petrosch, and I shall not readily forget the look of high-wrought strain which his face wore. All the lines had deepened; the eyes shone with unnatural brilliance, the sockets were sunken, and the face skin had that dead steely colour which comes after hours of fierce and passionate tension.
He looked as though he had lived ten years in as many hours, and knew himself to be still confronted by uncontrollable dangers full of the menace of utter ruin and incalculable disaster.
Twice before I had seen such a look on men’s faces. Once in the case of a reckless Westerner who, in the teeth of warning, started a forest fire only to see it spread with fierce violence down upon his own homestead, menacing his wife and children and all he had in the world, and barring the path of rescue with a wall of impassable flame. The other was a millionaire who, in a desperate plunge to double his millions, was caught by the market, and had to look on helplessly while he and his friends were beggared in a day.
And I read Petrosch’s look now to mean that he had helped to set in motion this wild revolt and was shocked by the violence already done and appalled by the prospect of what might yet have to follow.
I was glad to find it so. He might prove to be in a better mood to judge on its merits the effort I had made to save Gatrina. There had been enough horrors already to glut his anger; and he looked to the future with apprehension genuine enough to render him willing to prevent the commission of more.
He greeted Gatrina and me very formally, as he and Major Kireef took their seats at the table.