“I live!” she repeated. “I am the young Diana!—the old Diana is dead!”
Her arms dropped to her sides again, and she turned to Dimitrius with a bewitching smile.
“And you love me!” she said. “You love me as all men must love me!—even he loves me!” and she pointed playfully to Vasho, cowering in fear as far back in a shadowy corner as he could, out of the arrowy glances of her lovely eyes,—then, laughing softly again, she gathered her robe about her with a queenly air. “Come, Dr. Féodor Dimitrius! Let us go! I see by the way you look at me that you think your experiment has been too much for my brain, but you are mistaken. I am quite clear in memory and consciousness. You are the scientist who advertised for ‘a woman of mature years,’—I am Diana May who was ‘mature’ enough to answer you, and came from London to Geneva on the chance of suiting you,—I have submitted to all your commands, and here I am!—a success for you, I suppose, but a still greater success for myself! I do not know what has happened since I came into this laboratory a while ago—nor am I at all curious,—was that my coffin!”
She indicated the stretcher with its white canopy from which she had arisen. He was about to answer her, when she stopped him.
“No, tell me nothing! Say it is my chrysalis, from which I have broken out—a butterfly!” She smiled—“Look at poor Vasho! How frightened he seems! Let us leave this place,—surely we have had enough of it? Come, Dr. Dimitrius!—it’s all over! You have done with me and I with you. Take me to my rooms!”
Her air and tone of command were not to be gainsaid. Amazed and angry at his own sudden sense of inferiority and inefficiency, Dimitrius signed to the trembling Vasho to open the door of the laboratory, and held out his hand to Diana to guide her. She looked at him questioningly.
“Must I?” she asked. “You are quite enough in love with me already!—but if you take my hand——!”
Her eyes, brilliant and provocative, flashed disdainfully into his. He strove to sustain his composure.
“You are talking very foolishly,” he said, with studied harshness. “If you wish to convince me that you are the same Diana May who has shown such resolute courage and modesty, and—and—such obedience to my will, you must express yourself more reasonably.”
Her light laugh rippled out again.