"You are to be my brother," he said; "and Zara tells me that you two are going to America, to live. May I go with you, Dubravnik? Will you take me, also, out of this hell of plotting and scheming, and this chaos of exile and death? Will you make an American of me, and let me be your brother, indeed?"
After that, we three passed a very happy hour together, after which I hurried away, with the assurance that Zara would accompany me into the presence of the czar, that evening. I had not told her of the death of Prince Michael, for the knowledge of it, and why he had killed himself, could only cast a shadow over the great joy she was now experiencing; afterward, there would be a time and place for the telling, and I did not want the knowledge of it to come upon her with a shock, just now.
Weeks afterward, when we were on the deck of the steamer that was taking us to my own country, as we stood together, overlooking a moonlit sea, she reached up, and with one of her soft, fair hands, turned my face towards hers with a gesture that was characteristic; and I loved it.
"Dubravnik," she said—she still insists that she will always address me so, because it is the name by which she first knew me—"I do not know myself, any more. I am not the same woman who was once so vengeful. Love has taught me how to forgive. Love has made me over again. I am no longer the same Zara."
"No," I said lightly, "for now you are Zara Derrington."
"Tell me," she asked, after another interval of gazing across the waters, "shall we see Alexis Saberevski, over there, where your home is?"
I did not answer the question, for upon the instant she mentioned the name of my friend, it recalled to me the circumstance of my last parting with him. I remembered the sealed envelope he had given me, and the instructions that came with it. I had forgotten it entirely, until that moment; but now, without replying to her question, I drew the missive from my pocket and broke the seal.
What I read there seems wonderfully prophetic to me, even now, and I read it over a second time, in my amazement. Then I gave it to Zara.
"Read," I said, "for there is the answer to your question."
And this is the letter Zara read aloud to me, while we two leaned against the rail of the vessel that was bearing us to our home across the sea. The man in the moon was looking down, and smiling upon our happiness, and shedding sufficient light for my sweetheart-wife to see Saberevski's written words. They were:—