regarding me with an expression of wondering amazement, in which pity,
and longing, not unmixed with admiration, were dominant. She was silent
for the moment, but she kept her eyes fixed upon mine, and gradually
they began to glow with that fire of enthusiasm which no argument can
ever hope to overcome. Looking upon her I realized that if she were not
a nihilist at heart, she had become one by reason of some great mental
cataclysm through which she had passed. I believed then, and I was to
know later, that I was correct, and that nothing at present apparent
could swerve her from her set purpose, or could influence her against
the cause she had undertaken, and was now upholding, so valiantly. The
spasms of remorse that rushed upon her at times, and such feelings of
repugnance as I had heard her express in the garden, were only _oases_
in the desert of her perverted judgment, engendered in her very soul by
some terrible calamity through which she had personally passed, or
regarding which she had been a close observer. When she spoke again, it
was with low-toned softness, and she glided a step or two nearer to me,
raising her beautiful eyes, now softened to an appealing quality, and
clasping her hands in front of her with a gesture of suppliant
helplessness that was almost overwhelming.

"Do you think that we have no wrongs to right?" she demanded.

"I think you have many, princess, judging from your standpoint; but you
cannot right them by committing greater ones. Nothing can dignify or
ennoble deliberate assassination, or wanton, cruel, secret murder. The
nihilists are assassins, murderers, cutthroats."

"You do not know! You do not know!"

"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