“Dieu!” cried the Chief of Secret Police.
“Sophie Zagarovna! You—you must be mistaken.”
“Tseklinski!” gasped Sophie, deathly pale, shrinking from the man who had addressed her. “It is you! By Heaven! then we meet, and—and you are the victor! Once I spared your life as I have spared Feodor’s, and this is how you repay me—by arrest! I love Feodor, but I know there is no hope of happiness now I have fallen into your clutches.”
“You have deceived me,” cried Matvyèich, angry and bewildered at this revelation. “I have loved and trusted a murderess!”
“I—I have risked my life to save you,” she said wildly. “Kiss me once—for the last time,” she implored.
He flung her from him with an expression of disgust, coupled with an oath.
“You—you cast me aside!” she cried, in dismay. “Then I care nothing for my future.” Addressing Tseklinski, whom I recognised as the renowned and expert Petersburg detective, she shrieked, “When you were my lover I protected you; and through me you escaped the plot for your assassination. Now you arrest me for murder, merely because I removed a tyrant whose inhuman delight was to send innocent persons to Kara——”
“Enough, jade!” cried Tseklinski, his face flushed with rage. “We have sought for you long enough, and if Captain Matvyèich is weak enough to be tricked and fooled by you, I am not.”
Turning to the officers, he added—