Finally, toward two o’clock, Drexel decided he could best think the matter over in solitude, and he started home, walking for the sake of the brain-clearing fresh air. He had gone but a hundred yards or so when he became conscious that two shadowy forms were moving ahead of him, and one was lurking in the rear. The first two suddenly vanished, but the events of the last few days had made him alert for danger; his eyes went everywhere, and he held himself in tense readiness, so that when the two made a sudden rush at him from a breach in the river-wall, he quickly side-stepped, and sped along the river till he sighted a wandering sleigh. Back in the security of his room, he realized that the revolutionists were not through with him, and that he was in danger every time he left his four walls.
But he had greater matters to consider than this. During most of the night, and all the next morning, he was thinking over the many questions that beset his mind. Foremost, was or was not Sonya identical with Princess Valenko? He considered their points of similarity—weighed this against that. But at every turn he was balked by the fact that Sonya had tried to seize documents from Berloff’s house, and yet Berloff had last night treated the princess with most deferential courtesy—by the fact that only the day before she had arrived in aristocratic splendour from abroad—by her cool, smiling ignorance of him and what he talked of.
But finally, casting all bewildering pros and cons aside, he concluded that if such a high-spirited woman as the princess had been leading such a dangerous double life and had found herself in such a situation as last night’s, her behaviour would have been identical with the princess’s—she would have tried to brazen it through and make him think himself mistaken. They were one and the same, he decided; two such rare women, so similar, could not exist. And if they were the same, he could well understand why she had feared him and caused his capture. He had known her in the role of revolutionist, there was likelihood of his meeting her as Princess Valenko—and his discovery of their identicality would, as her fear viewed it, be disaster for her.
He at length shaped a plan, based on his love for her, on his desire to relieve her of her needless fear, and on the constant danger in which he stood. That afternoon he drove to the Princess Valenko’s. On the way he gave a look over his shoulder. A block behind in a sleigh he saw two men wrapped to the eyes, yet not so bundled up but that he recognized Ivan and Nicolai; and near them in another sleigh were two other men whom he instinctively felt to be their confederates.
Before his ring at the Valenko palace had been answered, he saw the two sleighs draw up across the street half a block ahead. Once admitted, he had not long to wait, but was ushered up a broad stairway into a great front drawing-room. He had hoped to find the princess alone; great, therefore, was his disappointment when he found himself with four gorgeous young officers and three women, all centring about her.
Without rising she gave him her hand, and smiled with distant, condescending friendship. “Ah—the American who is almost my relative,” she said in French; and proceeded with imperious languor to introduce him to the women and to the immaculate, gilded officers, to all of whom he bowed—though the latter he inwardly cursed as the brainless handiwork of tailors and valets.
She smiled amusedly into his face, and then about at the others. “He thinks, my almost relative”—with a little gesture toward him—“that he met me a few days ago here in St. Petersburg. And that—in what manner he has not said—he misconducted himself on that occasion. And that he shares some great secret of mine.”
Drexel fairly gasped. She had flung away her secret—and there she sat, easy, unconcerned, smiling.
“But impossible!” cried one of the officers. “The princess has been abroad since August.”
“Why it is simply absurd, monsieur,” said a stupid-looking, richly-dressed woman. “You remember, Olga—” this to the princess—“it’s only two weeks since you and I heard Tannhäuser together in Berlin. Ugh—what a wretched Elizabeth she was! And we came back yesterday from Berlin on the same train!”