"Perhaps not."
"Having heard what you did—knowing, as you do, my secret—unwilling as I know you are, to betray me, what do you propose, Mr. Dubravnik?"
I replied deliberately.
"I have thought of joining the nihilists, but I have reconsidered the question as impracticable. Therefore, I have decided that you must leave Russia."
"I? Leave Russia? Ordered away by you?"
"Yes, princess."
She laughed wildly, and again this creature of impulse underwent one of her lightning changes of which I had seen so many evidences. She was indignant now, made so by offended pride, because of the affront my words had put upon her social status. She, a princess, high in place, to be ordered out of her own country by a man who was a stranger to her, was unprecedented.
"Do you think that I am a weak thing to be ordered about like that by a man whom I never met until last night? Beware, sir, lest you make me regret that the bullet did not do its work more effectively. I am a princess; I have wealth, power, influential friends; do not think that the czar would believe what you would say, when he heard the story that I could tell him."
I shrugged my shoulders carelessly. It was part of my purpose to anger her even to the point of madness, for in that way alone could I hope to draw her out to the point of revealing herself to me truly. And besides, I was again falling under that fascination which exerted such strange and compelling power over me.
"If I believed you to be sincere in what you say now, it would make my unfortunate duty much more simple," I said.