ll for that. My intention was to warn you."

"I understood you, dear, perfectly."

She turned away from the window again and faced me, and her eyes were
glowing with the light of love. Again for the moment we were face to
face with the perils that menaced us from the outside, and before that
consideration, all else faded to nothingness with Zara. A little while
ago she had repudiated me, but all-conquering Love had stepped in
again, had overpowered her, enthralled her, and I could see that she
was more than ever mine own, now.

For a space we looked into each other's eyes across the short distance
that separated us. We were reading each other's souls, and both saw and
understood all that the heart of love could desire. It was an
undiscovered country to each of us, upon which we trod just then; a new
creation that was the sweeter because of its strangeness.

"I love you!" Zara whispered; and she came nearer until her hands
rested upon my shoulders, until her face was close to mine so that I
could feel her sweet breath against me. Her lips were parted slightly
in a half smile, and I knew that she had forgotten the waiting
_karetta_ with its freight of assassins.

I took her in my arms, slowly, tenderly, firmly. I held her pressed
closely against me for a moment and then my lips sought hers, and hers
sought mine. It was a oneness of desire, a singleness of purpose that
brought us together in the kiss of perfect love; and we remained so
while minutes sped. I closed my eyes and held her the more tightly
against me, so that I could feel the throbbing of her heart and the
quivering eagerness of her lithe body, warm against my own. We forgot
the dangers and perils that surrounded us; forgot the world and all it
contained; forgot life and death, czars and their empires, nihilists
and their plots, remembering nothing, in that great spasm of adoration.
We did not speak. There was no occasion for words. There came no
opportunity to utter them. But we breathed, and breathed together. Our
hearts throbbed in unison. Our souls communed, intermingled, blended
into one. We sighed together, thought together, until my own senses
reeled under the strain of it, and I knew that Zara was more than half
unconscious of all things save her present contact with me. Ah, heaven,
the greatness of it! The magnificence of that moment! The rapture of
her caress, and the great joy of mine to her!

Presently I felt her clinging arms relax and I guid