She lifted her shoulders again in that same almost imperceptible shrug, and looked casually out of the window.
“You can help America help our people,” she said. “As for Zorogoff, I have death ready at my bidding for myself before he could take me to his palace—I can defeat the dog of a Mongol. But what do you gain by your vengeance upon my father? A few hours of his life! Is that the measure of the value of your vengeance?”
“You think that I am too late—that I am already defeated in my purpose,” he said.
“Yes. You are, Peter Petrovitch. Time has defeated you.”
“No,” he insisted. “I have waited twenty years——”
“And after twenty years, you come back to what? Michael Kirsakoff and his daughter hiding from his Cossacks! The old governor, worse off than peasants, with death lurking at the door! The general of the Czar’s army, in flight and hiding like one of his own escapes in the old days! What sweeter vengeance would you ask, Peter Petrovitch?”
She spoke of her father and herself in the third person as if she were already separated from life and saw herself in the detachment of death, looking back upon her father’s and her own end.
“True, times have changed,” said Peter grimly.
“Yet you had no hand in it,” she said daringly, conscious that what she said might lift his wrath again. “The tree of hate has borne its own bitter fruit, and a gale of death sweeps the land——”
“Ay, the wheel has turned!” cried Michael from his chair. “And the water has returned to the sea! My sins are my own, and judgment is before me. But I have offered my life to you, Peter Gorekin, for——”