The countess saw that the prince’s rage sprang from his fear—his ever-present fear—that Drexel had discovered him to be the chief of the hated secret police. Also, she saw the danger of the prince ruining her new-made scheme. She threw herself between the two.
“Don’t, don’t, prince!” she cried. “It was all my doing!”
He turned upon her fiercely. “Your doing?”
She put all the double meaning into her words that she dared.
“I led him into it! The blame is all mine! He merely did what I——”
“Stop, countess!” Drexel interposed. He looked at the prince with the flaming recklessness of a mastering hate. “The blame is not hers, Prince Berloff. It is all mine. So whatever you do, you must do to me alone. I might as well tell you, though, in order to save your time, that I am not in the least afraid of that pistol.”
The prince was silent a moment, during which he held the pistol to Drexel’s breast and glared into his defiant eyes. “Not afraid? Why?”
“Because you dare not shoot.”
“You think not?”
“I know not.”