"I did not know you had a brother."
"Naturally, since his existence is forgotten. He was sentenced to Siberia when he was sixteen. Now he is thought to be dead, but he escaped, and is here. He must have brought some one with him last night—somebody who listened to everything. Do you know what that note means, my friend? It means that you have been sentenced to death. It means that the nihilists will surely take your life; and oh, my God, there is no escape!"
CHAPTER XI
FOR THE SAKE OF THE CZAR
When one is sentenced to death by the nihilists in Russia it sends a cold shiver down the back, no matter how brave and self-reliant one may be, for those fanatics have an uncomfortable way of carrying out such decrees to the bitter end. However, I smiled and assured the princess that I thought I could find a way to avoid the consequences of my eavesdropping, and then awaited the moment when she would say more. For a long time she was silent, and during it I studied her carefully, for she was the most complex puzzle that I had ever encountered in the shape of a woman. I had heard enough to know that she was not only a conspirator against the life of the emperor, but that she was ostensibly if not really, the leader among her fellow conspirators; or if not the leader, then a leader. I had heard her talk glibly of assassination and death, and I had heard her deplore in mental anguish the part she was forced to play in the game of Russian politics. In one moment I had believed her to be a heartless schemer, a murderess, and one who was devoid of compassion; and in the next I was forced to the conjecture that she was a victim of circumstances, and that she had no love for or sympathy with the cause she advocated. Now, as I watched her, the same emotions succeeded each other in my judgment of her character, and finally I summed them all up in the decision that she was a being who was swayed by impulses. There are seeming paradoxes which will explain just what my conclusions were concerning Zara de Echeveria. She was deliberately impulsive; calculatingly reckless; systematically chaotic. The warm, Southern blood in her veins impelled her to deeds which were rendered thrice effective by reason of the fact that she applied to them the calculating coolness and method of her Russian ancestors. Hence the paradox.
Presently she raised her eyes to mine.
"Dubravnik," she said slowly, "there is one way of escape for you; and there is only one."
"What is that?" I asked.
"You must become a nihilist."