"And therefore connected with the police."
"No. The police do not know me, save as you know me; not even the terrible Third Section."
She scarcely noticed my confession, so absorbed was she by the mere thought of the story she was about to relate.
Her eyes were turned towards the window, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap, her chin was raised, and she seemed to be looking into the past as one might look upon a picture hanging against the wall, observing every detail of it minutely, and yet conscious only of the whole.
"Fancy yourself, a Russian of noble birth, an officer in the army, a favorite at court, the possessor of almost unlimited wealth and happy beyond the dreams of heaven," she said, dreamily. "Search your memory for the picture of a beautiful girl—she was only a girl, not yet twenty, when my story begins—and make this one of whom I speak thrice more beautiful than the picture you delineate. She was your sister. She is your sister. You are her brother in the story I shall relate to you. You two are fatherless and motherless; you are all that is left of your family, once famous, and seemingly destined through you to become so again. You are a favorite with the czar, and your sister is the pet of the royal family. Your influence at court is unlimited. You are on the summit of the wave of favor and popularity. Have you drawn the picture?"
"I endeavor to do so, princess."
"You and Yvonne—she had a French name—reside in the same palace where your fathers lived before you. Your sister is the idol of your heart. You worship her with such devotion that it becomes a maxim quoted by mothers to their sons. You idealize her, and are proud of her; and she is worthy of it all. Ah, sir, follow me with care, for the story will touch you, I believe, as nothing else could do."
Zara left the couch and crossed to the window, where she stood staring through it for a long period of time, so silent, so still, so like a statue in her attitude, that I beheld her with something like awe, while I trembled with eagerness for her to speak again. I must admit that the story she had begun to relate had thus far made no impression upon me, and that it was only the voice of the woman I loved, and the changing expressions of its tone, and her beautiful countenance, which attracted me then. She was so wholly lovable in every attribute of her being; and now, absorbed as she was by the retrospective consideration of the tale she had begun to relate, and because her manner was entirely impersonal, she became even more compelling in her fascinations for me. I forgot, for the moment, that she was a Russian princess and a nihilist, and remembered only the one absorbing fact that she was a woman. My duties in St. Petersburg and the character I had assumed in fulfilling them, the city itself and all my surroundings, the environment of the moment and all that went with it, faded from my mental view, and left us two there, utterly alone in a world of our own, self created by my own conceit of the moment.
I do not know what impulse it was that brought me to my feet with a sudden start of resolve, but I had taken three or four strides toward her, with arms outstretched to seize her lithe form in my embrace, and to crush her against me in a burst of passion which I found myself no longer able to control, when I was startled into motionlessness and silence by a sudden cry from Zara, who turned about and faced me for an instant, and who then seized me by the arm and drew me to the window, pointing into the street as she did so.