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.

CHAPTER XII

WHEN LOVE WAS BORN

The streets of St. Petersburg, the city itself, nihilism, Russia, the
czar had ceased to exist for me, however. Whatever she may have seen
upon the street that had brought that startled cry to her lips, and had
made her turn about and grasp my arm, had also brought into her
countenance an expression of such overwhelming and overpowering concern
for me, that I knew with a perfect knowledge in that instant, that Zara
loved me.

Have you ever been swayed by an impulse that is utterly beyond your
control, and before which all other considerations degenerate to such
utter insignificance as not to exist at all?

It was such an one that controlled me then.

As she drew me toward the window, and would have directed my gaze
through it, her own eyes held unflinchingly to mine, and mine held hers
with a compelling power which she did not seek to resist, and could not
have controlled,