Von Salzinger spent a bad evening with himself, and a worse night.
Curiously enough this man regarded himself as not only a man of honor, but chivalrous towards women. How he arrived at the latter conclusion was one of those miracles of psychology which are beyond the understanding of the human mind. To him woman was weaker than the man whose plaything she was set on earth to become. Man's will must be her law. She possessed no rights of her own. Man's strength to enforce his will on all weaker vessels was the only right he could understand. Then woman, in the nature of things, must be intended as his plaything.
But Von Salzinger drew the line hard and fast at the limits of this understanding. Woman must be protected from physical harm and discomfort by the man whose plaything she became. As soon would he deem it right to treat ill any other of those things in life which gave him pleasure. As soon would he expect to see a child tear and rend its favorite toy. Woman must be cared for, woman must be sheltered from the buffets of life outside her own little life. She must be indulged in the feminine luxuries and pastimes. Any other course he believed would be an exhibition of brutality by no means in keeping with the boasted Kultur of his people. The moral and spiritual side of the woman was something which failed entirely to enter into his comprehension. In the moral and spiritual side of life she had no place—no place whatever.
The plan of Von Berger, and the cruel nature of the work assigned to him, had outraged all his ideas of his peculiar form of chivalry. To condemn Vita to death, and wilfully carry out the sentence, failing the success of their plans, was an unthinkable and useless cruelty which he felt he could not take part in. Brutality had here exceeded itself.
So he endured a painful and troubled night as he revolved in his mind the diabolical scheme which Von Berger had unfolded to him.
He contemplated disobedience. Yes, he contemplated defying the terrible power which Von Berger wielded so ruthlessly. But the consequence of such defiance left him panic-stricken, albeit unconvinced. He searched for a way out. But every mode of egress seemed barred to him. Every one except—— She was so very, very beautiful.
A tempting thought possessed him, and surged through the thickly flowing channels of the animal in him. The temptation grew and grew, and, with each passing hour, it more surely took possession of all that was most obstinate in him. He was yielding to it. He knew. He left Von Berger out of his calculations, he left all thoughts of the purposes of his Government out and thought only of himself, and this new temptation which dangled before his greedy eyes. Should he yield to the temptation?
His mind went back again of a sudden to the man, Von Berger, whom he knew he hated as much as he feared. It seemed so hopeless to oppose him, hopeless to oppose Berlin. Yet he felt he ought to. Then his thoughts flew again to Vita, and conjured visions of her perfect charms—and so he fell asleep.
Vita's days and nights had become one long nightmare of terror. The terror for herself had undermined all her confidence for her father, and in her lover's ability to succor. The hours of racking thought since learning the fate awaiting herself left her beautiful face drawn, and her spirit bowed and crushed. There was no hope anywhere.
From the moment she had first recognized Frederick von Berger, a dreary hopelessness had set in, and now she knew that her worst apprehensions were to be more than fulfilled. She knew something of the machinery he controlled, and she knew how hopeless it was that Ruxton, with all his manhood and confidence, could ever hope to contend with it and defeat it. Her father, she knew, would be hunted down and—punished. While she—she must inevitably fall a victim of the sentence passed upon her here in this desolate, secret prison.