"Yes, as my lover was murdered, as my brother was murdered, as my mother and my sister are being murdered in Siberia, as my father died, murdered in the dungeons of St. Peter and St. Paul. And for what? For daring to act, to speak, to read, to think; for striving to be men and women, for revolting against the horrible tyranny which crushed them as it crushes millions! That was their crime. Bah! what do you know, you English, of brutality, of force, of cruelty, of slavery? You play with the words, and think you have the thing!"
She looked at him as he shrank from her, horrified, unable to grasp or believe her words. Again she laughed bitterly, and, putting her hand into the bosom of her dress, drew out a little roll of paper, and held it toward him. The Doctor drew back. It had suddenly become horrible. He faltered:
"What is it?"
"The last lines of farewell which my lover contrived to have sent to me from his prison the day before they butchered him," she answered, steadily. "He bade me farewell, and called upon me to avenge him. It was redder then than now, for even the blood of an innocent man fades with time; and he wrote this with his blood. With it in my hand, with the memory of his face, when they dragged him away from me forever, always before me, I swore I would obey his last prayer. It is done. His murderer is dead!"
She spoke with an air of dreary triumph, a dreadful exultation that chilled her listener's blood. This was not the woman he had loved, upon whom he had poured out all his long-guarded stores of devotion and passion—this terrible, beautiful, avenging Medusa! His utter confusion and bewilderment were patent to her; as he sank into a chair, she drew a pace nearer to him, speaking rapidly, never pausing except when he himself interrupted her, never halting for a word.
"Sir, listen! I am in your power, since without your aid I cannot escape. I should have been a prisoner now had I not thought of you and had about me the key of your door. I thought you would save me—I think you will, for I have already saved you."
"Me!" he exclaimed, wonderingly.
"You! Think you I do not know where you were taken on Saturday night?"
"You knew! Then——"
"I was there—yes. I knew you would be waylaid and taken there. I knew what you would be asked to do—first, to attend to the injuries of the foolish one among us who had tried to do what he could not do; secondly, to finish what he had begun. You are a braver man than I thought you, and you refused. Without those chemicals we were helpless, for it is those that were used last night. In that deserted house—our meeting-place at intervals for the past year—your dead body might have lain undiscovered for months—would have lain undiscovered in all probability—for you were dealing with desperate men, and you defied them. I went there, as I have done twice before since I lived here, and I pleaded for you and saved you. But I could not have done it except for one thing—I took with me what they wanted. Gustave understands chemicals, and how to combine them; he came here, after I had lied to you about him—for all that story that I told you was one great lie, told because I knew something of my power over you, and that you would probably act as you did—hoping that he could here possess himself of the chemicals that were needed, and which we could not obtain without too great risk of discovery. You believed every word of the story with which I befooled you; he came here, and obtained them easily."