"To plead with you, to beseech you to let my son alone."
A change came over Romanoff's face as he heard the words. A new strength seemed to have come to him. Confidence shone in his eyes, his every feature spoke of triumph.
"Your son! His son!" he cried harshly. "The son of the man for whom you cast me into the outer darkness. But for him you might have been the mother of my son, and I—I should not have been what I am."
"You are what you are because you have always yielded to the promptings of evil," replied the woman. "That was why I never loved you—never could love you."
"But you looked at me with eyes of love until he came."
"As you know, I was but a child, and when you came with your great name, your great riches, you for a time fascinated me; but I never loved you. I told you so before he came."
"But I loved you," said Romanoff hoarsely. "You, the simple country girl, fascinated me, the Russian noble. And I would have withheld nothing from you. Houses, lands, position, a great name, all—all were yours if you would have been my wife. But you rejected me."
"I did not love you. I felt you were evil. I told you so."
"What of that? I loved you. I swore I would win you. But you—you—a simple country girl, poor, ignorant of the world's ways, resisted me, me—Romanoff. And you married that insipid scholar fellow, leaving me scorned, rejected. And I swore I would be revenged, living or dead. Then your child was born and you died. I could not harm you, you were beyond me, but your son lived. And I swore again. If I could not harm you, I could harm him, I could destroy him. I gave myself over to evil for that. I, too, have passed through the doorway which the world calls death; but powers have been given me, powers to carry out my oath. While his father was alive, I could do nothing, but since then my work has been going forward. And I shall conquer, I shall triumph."
"And I have come here to-night to plead with you on my son's behalf. He has resisted wrong for a long time. Leave him in peace."