d
in a tone which I endeavored to render as monotonous as possible, "that
has for its purpose the undoing of nihilism, as it is now practiced.
That body of men extends, in its ramifications, throughout St.
Petersburg, and even to other cities of Russia. Its purpose, primarily,
is not to send conspirators to Siberia to suffer exile there, with all
the other horrors that go with it, but to----"

"Enough!" she interrupted me. "I have heard quite enough, Dubravnik!
What you say to me now, is meaningless twaddle. You are like all the
others who pit themselves against the silent body of men and women who
are engaged in seeking the freedom of their country. If you knew
anything of the horrors of Siberia, to which you so glibly refer, you
would shudder when you mention them, and you would fly with horror from
any act of your own that might commit a person to Siberia, and exile."

She came half-way around the table, and stood facing me, somewhat
nearer. "If you had taken a journey through Siberia before you offered
your services to the czar, you would have strangled yourself, or have
cut out your tongue, rather than have gone to him with any such
dastardly proposition as you confess yourself to have fathered. _You_
prate of stultifying yourself by taking the oath of nihilism, and
repudiating your word to Alexander. YOU! YOU! A PROFESSIONAL SPY!" She
threw back her head and laughed aloud, not with glee, but with utter
derision of spirit, and I shrank from the sound of it as I might have
done from a blow in the face.

Again she was a creature of moods and impulses. Again the wild Tartar
blood, leaping in her veins, controlled her. With a sudden move she
came nearer to me, and bending forward, looked into my face intently,
as if searching for something which had hitherto escaped her notice.

"What are you doing, Zara?" I asked her; and she replied.

"I am searching for the man whom, but a moment ago, I thought I loved.
I am seeking to find what it could have been that I saw in your eyes,
or your face, or your manner, that has so '_stultified_' ME. It is an
apt word, Dubravnik."

"Seek further, and perhaps you will find."

"No," she said. "He is gone, if he ever was there;" and she shrank
slowly away from me, backward, across the room, until the table was
again between us, and she stood leaning upon it with both hands this
time, peering at me with widened eyes that might have belonged to a
child in the act of staring between