"Only one? What is that?"
"Moral cowardice."
"But there may be circumstances where it offers the only means of escape from an alternative that is infinitely worse, Mr. Dubravnik." We were in the act of passing one of the little side paths, and I drew her into it, noticing that there was just a suggestion of resistance from my companion when I did so; but it was only for an instant. Then, as I paused abruptly underneath one of the green shaded globes, she added, as though she knew that I perfectly understood her: "I have really been considering the subject quite seriously."
I looked down at her. The green hue of the light above us seemed to have transformed her into a spirit. It had changed the color of her dress, of her hair, and it had touched her cheeks as with a magic wand which softened and heightened every feature. Instead of transforming her into something that she was not, I was convinced that it brought her back from what she was not to what she really was. At all events, I realized that she was in deadly earnest.
In that moment I felt again all the spell of this woman's charm as she stood before me, beneath the glow of that shaded light, looking up into my face with her beautiful eyes now widened with serious concern, with her full, lithe, graceful body pulsing with life so close to mine, while she talked calmly, and seriously I knew, too, of destroying it by her own act.
What a place to talk of suicide, there, in the midst of that oriental garden, voluptuous with a thousand unspoken suggestions, laden with the perfume of flowers, glowing with the many colored lights that illumined it, rustling as with the sound of hidden insects as the gowns of gorgeously bedecked women brushed against the growing things! Over our heads, beyond the glass roof, the storm still howled, although with less violence, and the contrast seemed strangely in keeping with the condition of my own mind, outwardly so calm and composed, yet torn by the thousand conflicting emotions that were induced by the proximity of this entrancing creature, and the knowledge of what her fate, and therefore mine, must inevitably be.
CHAPTER X
SENTENCED TO DEATH
To what lengths our conversation on that subject might have gone I will never know, for at that instant we were interrupted by Prince Michael, who was seeking my companion. I had only time to utter one admonition: