“Well—I guess so,” said the little American, uneasily. “Of course, to us it was all mysterious; but he seemed to make it out, and at last, when you rose up and stretched out your arm and cried out, ‘Die! in your crimes—die!’ the Colonel just gave a sort of gasp, and crash went his chair, and he lay there on the floor like a dead creature. We were all finely scared, I can tell you. The odd part was that you went to sleep again like a child, just as simply and quietly as possible, and my husband and the poet, and poor old Diogenes, they got the Colonel to his room, and laid him on the bed, and we sent for a doctor, and he’s not conscious yet. That’s all I can tell you.”
The Princess Zairoff leant back on her chair white and silent. She asked no more questions.
Presently an attendant appeared with obsequious inquiries. The princess suddenly shivered. “Ask them,” she said, abruptly, “to bring up the temperature to 300 degrees, I am cold.”
“Cold!” Mrs Jefferson stared. “I guess it’s as well I came here first,” she said, “for certainly I can’t stand it 50 degrees hotter than it is at present. I’ll go into the second room. You see I’m reversing the usual order this morning. Three, two, one, instead of one, two, three. I’ll sit just here by the door, so that we can still talk if you wish. I look like a boiled lobster, I’m sure.”
Princess Zairoff said nothing. But when the American had withdrawn, she threw herself down on a couch near the wall. By choosing it she was out of sight of anyone in the adjoining room, though able to converse if she wished.
That she did not wish was very evident. No sooner was she alone than an expression of intense anguish came over her face. Her hands locked themselves together, an agony far beyond the weakness of tears was in her beautiful eyes.
“I have lost him,” she cried, in a stifled whisper. “Lost him for ever... and it was for this we were brought together... For this I was commanded to learn the secret of my failure. Yes, I, who thought myself so wise, have failed... Failed at the crucial test, because my passions governed me... because my heart was weak, for sake of love... Oh, my lost strength—my lost self-restraint... Must I again tread the weary road... and only overcome to fail again?”
She turned aside and hid her face in her hands, while all that dusky veil of rippling hair fell over her like a cloud.
“I am so human still,” she moaned—“so human that, woman-like, I deceived myself, and dreamt of love perfected here, when I might have known—I might have known... But, oh, to lose him thus! To stand before his eyes shamed, sin-stricken, criminal—I cannot bear that—it is beyond my strength...”
A new fierce passion seemed suddenly to take possession of her soul. She raised herself once more, and the old lovely light and splendour glowed in her eyes.