She gently freed herself from his embrace, looked across her shoulder to see whether the lamp was burning all right, took a bite from her peach, and then calmly answered him:—
“You are talking idly. How can I, a servant, become a Tsaritsa?”
“I’ll marry you, then you can’t help being one! My father did just the same. His wife, Catherine, belongs to no distinguished family; she used to wash linen with the Finnish women, her companions; a chemise was all she wore when taken a prisoner, and yet she reigns. You, also, Afrossinia Fédorevna, will be a Tsaritsa, and no worse than others.”
He wanted to tell her all he felt, yet knew not how to express it. He wanted to tell her the main idea of his life—that it was just because she was of the people he had loved her; though he was the son of the Tsar, he felt he too belonged to the people. He did not share the noble’s pride, but loved the simplicity of the common folk. It is from them that he would accept the crown. Good must be repaid by good. The common people will make him Tsar, and he will make her, Afrossinia, the serf-girl, a Tsaritsa.
She remained silent, her eyes cast down, and her face revealing little beyond an unmistakeable longing for sleep. But he pressed her closer and closer to himself, conscious of the freshness of her naked body concealed by the thin material. She resisted, and tried to free herself. Suddenly by accident he caught the chemise which was kept together by a single button on the shoulder. It gave way, and the chemise slipped off and fell to her feet.
She stood before him naked, amidst the brilliancy of her tawny golden hair alone. The beauty spot over her left brow was strangely enticing. Again there was something faun-like, shining, mysterious and wild in her almond-shaped eyes.
“Let me go Alexis, I am ashamed, let me go!”
If she felt shame, she did not feel it very acutely. She turned aside her head a little with her usual indolent, slightly mocking smile; and remained, always under his caresses, cold, innocent, almost virginal, notwithstanding the scarcely perceptible swelling curve which revealed her pregnancy. Her body seemed to glide out of his embracing arms, to become ethereal and melt away like a phantom.
“Afrossinia!” he whispered, trying to retain the vision, and suddenly he fell on his knees before her.
“For shame,” she repeated, “on the eve of a holy day, and when the lamp is burning, sin! sin!”