"Of course not! How could any one who holds the Doctrine do that? We know that every moral debit must be worked off and turned into a credit by the sinner, however many lives of suffering it takes to do it. Why do you ask?"
"So that you might answer as you have done!" she said, with a little laugh. "Now this Oscarovitch has sinned grievously, not only in this life but in many others, and I am going to see that he works off at least some of his debit as you put it somewhat commercially. He loved me in the old days in Memphis, and he loves me still in the same brutal, animal way. I know that if he cannot get me by fair means he will try to take me by force—and I am going to let him do it."
"Niti!"
"Yes, he shall take me; he shall think he had got me safe away from you and Mark—and when he has got me he shall taste what the hot-and-strong sort of Christian preachers call the torments of the damned. No, I shall not kill him. He shall live till he prays to all his gods, if he has any, that he may die. He shall hunger without eating, thirst without drinking, lie down without sleeping, have wealth that he cannot spend, and palaces so hideously haunted that he dare not live in them, until, when men wish to illustrate the uttermost extreme of human misery, they shall point to Prince Oscarovitch. I, the Queen, have said it!"
Then, with a swift change of voice and manner, she laid her hands on her father's shoulders, kissed him, and murmured:
"Good-night, Dad—at least as far as this world is concerned."
CHAPTER XXI
WHAT HAPPENED AT TRELITZ
It was the 6th of June again.