“It is for you I fear,” she said, as she clung convulsively to him. “Let us leave the castle till the Czar be gone. Nothing but harm will come of this meeting.” All in a moment that frowning portrait in the Hall of the Czars rose vividly before her. If a mere picture could fill her mind with a nameless terror, what would be the effect of the living original? “Oh, Wilfrid, don’t—don’t make me face him!” she gasped. “I dare not—I don’t know why, but I dare not! If he sees me ... there is something ... something at my heart ... that tells me this embrace ... will be our last! Let us.... My God! he is coming ... it is too late!”
CHAPTER XXX
BEHIND THE CURTAIN
The door by which Wilfrid and Marie had entered was not the only one giving access to the room; at the opposite end was a second, partly open, and along the corridor leading to this came the sound of voices, two in number, a woman’s and a man’s.
Pauline and the Czar were approaching. A moment more and they would be within the room.
Marie’s terrified air alarmed Wilfrid. She must be kept from the trying ordeal of facing the Czar. As it was too late, however, to escape from the room, he hastily drew her behind a curtain that hung across the entrance of an alcove, and, seating her in a fauteuil that happened by good fortune to be there, placed his finger upon her lips as a warning for her to be silent, a warning that was scarcely needed.
A moment afterwards the Czar and Pauline were in the room.
The drapery of the alcove consisted of two curtains, hung so as to leave from top to bottom an opening of about an inch in width, that enabled Wilfrid to see the Czar.
Tall and handsome, Alexander was endowed with a presence that, majestic in itself, was rendered more so by a grand and brilliant uniform. Wilfrid, despite his prejudice, was compelled to admit that here was a man as well as an emperor. His stately aspect seemed to breathe a sort of challenge to Wilfrid, upon whom there stole that elemental feeling that made the old heathen warrior raise his clenched fist to the skies with the cry of, “I defy thee, O Odin! Come down from heaven and let us try which is the better man!”