All followed suit, and as the clock chimed twelve a few minutes later, the two Aerians took their leave, and left Olga and Serge alone.
“You said you would begin your share of the work to-night,” said he, as soon as they were alone. “Have you done so?”
“If you do your work to-morrow as successfully as I have done mine to-night,” replied Olga, looking steadily into his eyes as she spoke, “the Empire of the Air will no longer be theirs.”
Serge returned her glance in silence. He wanted to speak, but some superior power seemed to have laid a spell upon his will, and as long as Olga’s burning eyes were fixed on his, his tongue was paralysed, nay, more than this, his mind even refused to shape the sentences that he would have liked to speak. Olga held him mute before her for several minutes, and then she said quietly, still keeping her eyes fixed on his—
“Now speak, and tell me what you would do if I told you that I preferred Alan as a lover to you, and that I would rather a thousand times be his slave and plaything than your wife.”
“I should say that you are the mistress of my destiny, that I have no law but your will, and that it is for you to give me joy or pain, as seems good to you.”
Serge spoke the unnatural words in a calm, passionless tone, rather as though he were speaking in a sort of hypnotic trance than in full command of his senses. A strange, subtle influence had been stealing through his veins and over his nerves ever since he had drunk the liquor which Olga had prepared.
He seemed perfectly incapable of resisting any suggestion that might have been made to him. His will was paralysed, but even the consciousness of this fact was fading from his mind. All his passions were absolutely in abeyance. Even his love for Olga failed to inspire him with any jealous resentment of words which half an hour before would have goaded him to frenzy. He heard them as though they concerned someone else.
The ruin of his life’s hopes, which they implied so distinctly, had no meaning for him; so far as his volition was concerned he was an automaton, ready to obey without question the dictates of her imperious will.
“That will do,” said Olga, in the tone of a mistress addressing a servant. “Now go to bed and sleep well, and remember the work that lies before you to-morrow.”