han I could have supposed possible.

"Indeed?" I remarked, raising my brows, but otherwise not showing the
surprise I felt. Here was still another phase of the character of the
woman I loved so madly. But I could see that she spoke in the past
tense; of something no longer considered.

"Yes; I thought that. Why not? It seemed the only way by which I could
secure the revenge I believed I must have. I could have obtained it in
that way. Long ago he sheltered himself from anything that I could do,
under the cloak of our order. I could have married him, and in six
months have tortured him into the grave; or, if that had failed, I
could have poisoned him. Ah! did you ever hate--truly hate--anybody? If
you never did, you cannot imagine the rage that has been in my heart
against those two men. No, they are not men; they are beasts,
reptiles." So she spoke of Alexis Durnief and Alexander, the czar. I
could scarcely recognize this woman who could hate others with such
intensity.

"Do you think, princess," I said, slowly, "that if Stanislaus were
alive, he would approve of such a method of taking revenge for the
wrong done to him, and to his sister?" I asked the question
impersonally, and without any resentment in my tone, or manner. Indeed,
I felt none. We were referring to a possibility that was now as far in
the past as were the incidents of the story she had related. But I
desired to probe that other side of her, the vengeful one, as deeply as
possible, and when she did not reply, I added: "Do you think he would
have rested contentedly in his grave, if you had become the wife of the
man who wronged him most, no matter what your purpose might be?"

"No," she said. "I do not. But I had not thought of it in that light. I
remembered only Yvonne--and him."

"Zara, did you love Stanislaus?"

She sighed deeply. She raised her eyes to mine, and she stretched forth
a tentative hand for me to clasp, and hold. My touch gave her a sense
of personal protection.

"How you probe the innermost secrets of one's heart, Dubravnik," she
smiled at me. "I will tell you the truth, and the whole truth. It is
because I never loved him, because I never knew and appreciated his
worth, until he was dead, that I believed that I could not live and
bear the thought that he should continue unavenged, while Alexis
Durnief, the perpetrator of such outrages, appeared boldly here at St.
Petersburg, and even dared to make love to me. I was a girl then, a