our long journey; they provide you
with money; and somehow--you never know how--you reach Saghalien, only
to find that Yvonne is not there; that she has been transferred. Then
you begin a weary search which consumes months; so many of them, that
they swell into two long years. You go from prison to prison, from town
to town, from hope to despair, from despair to hope, and at
last--YOU FIND HER!"

Zara dropped to her knees before me. I knew that the climax of her
story was at hand. Her beautiful eyes, widened, and speaking dumbly of
infinite sorrow, sought mine, and held them. I bent forward, and kissed
her on the forehead. Then she resumed:

"You find her in a far away prison in the north. You find her half
clothed, lost to all sense of modesty, the sport, the victim, the THING
of the inhuman brutes who are her guards. You find her body; her
beautiful soul has fled. She is not dead, but she gazes at you with a
vacant stare of unrecognition. She laughs at you when you tell her that
you are her brother. She does not know you. She has forgotten her own
name. She taunts you with being another brute, like the men she has
known there, in that foul haunt of unspeakable vices. Then you go quite
mad. You clasp her in your arms, and draw her slender body against you.
When you release her, she falls at your feet, dead, for you have buried
your knife in her heart. Never again will she be the sport of brutal
men. You have dealt out mercy to your suffering sister, and the agony
you have endured gave you the necessary strength of will. You are God's
agent in the deed."

I could feel that Zara was shuddering with the horror of the scene she
had described; not at the deed of that brother who stabbed his sister
to death to save her, but because of the awful fate of that poor girl,
which the tragic act of her brother brought to an end. I drew Zara
tenderly into my arms, and held her so for a long time, while she wept
softly, with her head pillowed against my shoulder; and after a time
she resumed, haltingly:

"When you turned away from your tragic deed of mercy, you killed the
guard who tried to stop you. You made your escape; how, you do not
remember; but you found your way back here--here, to St. Petersburg.
Nobody recognized you. Your hair was white, your face was the face of a
corpse. You had one more purpose; the death of two men, the czar and
the conspirator. And so you went again to your friends, the nihilists.
Hush! I am not