Reputedly a Russian lady, Ziska was in reality the flesh-clad ghost of Ziska-Charmazel, the favorite of the harem of a great Egyptian warrior, described in forgotten histories as “The Mighty Araxes.” Visiting Egypt at the same time as the Princess was Armand Gervase, a French painter of great renown, and the interest of the story may be imagined when it is explained that Armand was the nineteenth-century incarnation of Araxes, who, it must be understood, had, in the dim long-ago, slain Ziska-Charmazel because she stood in the way of his ambition.
The modern Araxes is quickly enslaved by Ziska’s loveliness, but the passion that consumes him is a decidedly uncanny one, as the following passage will show. Armand is speaking to Helen Murray, the sister of his great friend, Denzil Murray. In Scotland during the previous summer Armand had paid Helen some attentions, and Helen does not fail to note that the charms of Ziska have dissipated any tender feeling which Armand might have once entertained for the Scottish girl. “How was I to know,” cries Armand, “that this horrible thing would happen?” “What horrible thing?” enquires Helen.
“This,” he answers: “the close and pernicious enthralment of a woman I never met till the night before last; a woman whose face haunts me; a woman who drags me to her side with the force of a magnet, there to grovel like a brain-sick fool and plead with her for a love which I already know is poison to my soul! Helen, Helen! You do not understand—you will never understand! Here, in the very air I breathe, I fancy I can trace the perfume she shakes from her garments as she moves; something indescribably fascinating yet terrible attracts me to her; it is an evil attraction, I know, but I cannot resist it. There is something wicked in every man’s nature; I am conscious enough that there is something detestably wicked in mine, and I have not sufficient goodness to overbalance it. And this woman,—this silent, gliding, glittering-eyed creature that has suddenly taken possession of my fancy—she overcomes me in spite of myself; she makes havoc of all the good intentions of my life. I admit—I confess it!”
Unfortunately, the painter’s very good friend, Denzil Murray, also becomes inspired with a passion for Ziska, and the lad’s temper is roused when Armand openly admits that his intentions with regard to the Princess are strictly dishonorable. Murray suggests that it were well Ziska should know this, but Armand laughs at the other’s idea that the bringing of such tidings to Ziska’s ears would lower him one jot in that lovely lady’s estimation:
“My good boy, do you not know that there is something very marvelous in the attraction we call love? It is a preordained destiny,—and if one soul is so constituted that it must meet and mix with another, nothing can hinder the operation. So that, believe me, I am quite indifferent as to what you say of me to Madame la Princesse or to any one else. It will not be for either my looks or my character that she will love me, if, indeed, she ever does love me; it will be for something indistinct, indefinable, but resistless in us both, which no one on earth can explain.”
The hot-headed young Highlander, however, will not be put off with any such reasoning, and the rivalry might have resulted awkwardly at an early date of its upspringing had not Armand steadfastly refused to quarrel.
There is one person at the hotel who makes a shrewd guess at the spiritual identity of both Ziska and Armand—an old savant named Dr. Dean, who is visiting Egypt for the purpose of studying its hieroglyphs and other matters possessing interest for an antiquarian. A knowing fellow is this Doctor, and a fine little character, whose good-humored personality and quiet, shrewd observations present a soothing contrast to the passionate utterances of Murray and Armand, and the dramatic outbursts of Ziska when she scornfully taunts the painter with his vileness.
In conversation with the Doctor, Gervase Armand admits that there is something about Ziska which has struck him as being familiar. “The tone of her voice and the peculiar cadence of her laughter” affect him peculiarly. When he wonders whether he has ever come across her before as a model either in Paris or Rome, the Doctor shakes his head. “Think again,” he says. “You are now a man in the prime of life, Monsieur Gervase, but look back to your early youth,—the period when young men do wild, reckless, and often wicked things,—did you ever in that thoughtless time break a woman’s heart?”
Armand admits that he may have done so, and the Doctor propounds his theory: