“Oh, Boris, have you sunk so low, have you let your ambitions overcome all the softer impulses of your nature? Would you really murder me for fear I should tell, and frustrate your schemes?”
She looked very beautiful as she appealed to him. For a moment the old love for her, the old infatuation surged up in his heart. He clasped her to his breast, and murmured softly the words: “Why are you not heart and soul with me, as you used to be?”
She disengaged herself gently from his embrace; it no longer thrilled her. “You are no longer the same to me, Boris,” she whispered, with the usual subterfuge of the woman. “You have had other loves besides La Belle Quéro.”
“I do not admit that, Inez,” he answered, in his rough, hard tones, a little shaken by his emotion. “But remember, we are bound together by solemn ties, by solemn oaths, to the same cause. Mark my words,” he added, with a sudden access of savagery. “If you play me false in that respect, expect no mercy.”
“If I play you false, Boris, I expect no mercy; I shall get none. I know the manner of man you are.”
“Yes, you know the sort of man I am, Inez. Pursue your little flirtations, if you will. I shall not complain. But once play me false in other matters, and your doom is sealed.”
He strode out of the room, and the face of Madame Quéro went white as she remembered the threat. The Prince loved her in his rough, brutal way, but if she interfered with his plans, he would brush her out of his path with as little compunction as he would kill a fly that annoyed him with its impertinent buzzing.
And then, in a few moments, her thoughts went back to the handsome young Italian, Corsini. She had, in an unguarded moment, given him away. Zouroff’s slow, but unrelenting, vengeance would pursue him. The Prince had said that Corsini must disappear. In this autocratic country people disappeared every day, and nobody seemed to wonder. It was such a common occurrence.
Next day Madame Quéro, very disturbed, sought Corsini at his private office at the Imperial Opera. Her object was to gain a little time before Zouroff could put his evil designs into execution.