Mutely he nodded his head and sighed.
"She wanted me to read this to exonerate Pushkin, did she not? She wished it so. She had a great, noble soul!"
"Indeed she had, sire!"
"And it was at her desire; and Pushkin was only fulfilling her last wishes in acting as he did?"
"He could not have done otherwise."
"I believe it. He could not have done otherwise. And yet I cannot reconcile myself to the thought that he did it—that in the very same hour that he had covered the face of one bride with the funereal veil he could draw the bridal veil over the face of the other! He had to do it! And yet it seems incomprehensible to human understanding how there can be a whole eternity in one short hour of time; how, in one short hour, a man can fly from the arctic pole to the equator; how, in one and the same moment, a man can mourn over a dead love and marry a living one!"
"But if he had loved her previously?" asked Zeneida, softly.
"What did you say?"
"If that which he experienced for her who was gone was but the adoration and boundless reverence for a being of another world, whose wings were already bearing her heavenward when first he knew her? If all the affection, tenderness, devotion which led him to the feet of his worshipped bride were but sacrifices offered at the shrine of a saint to keep her in life?"
Alexander struck his forehead with his hand.