"Encourage him!" It is impossible to describe the sense of outrage

which Zara de Echeveria managed to include in the enunciation of

those two words. Listening from my place among the cushions in the

Turkish bower, I was conscious of a feeling of gladness that it was

so; that she resented the tone of the man, as well as the words he

had uttered; that she repudiated utterly the insinuation he had

made. "You use the term as if you thought it were a pleasure to me

to lead men on, simply because God gave me the beauty and the power.

I hate it; oh, how I hate it! Suppose that Jean Morét is dead,

who, then, in God's name is responsible for his death? I, I alone!

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Do you think that I am so heartless that I can look upon such things

with no pang of self-reproach? I wish that I were old and ugly,

fortuneless and an outcast--or dead. Then I would not be compelled

to prostitute my beauty and my talents to conspire with a rabble of

scoundrels and convicts who discuss murder and assassination as if

they were pastimes."

"Hush! You do not realize what you say, Zara. Your own life----"

She laughed outright, interrupting him.

"My own life! Do you think I care for that? I wish they would kill me

and so end all this hateful, horrible scheming to murder and destroy."

"Hush, Zara! hush! You must not talk in that way."

"Not talk that way?" The princess laughed somewhat wildly, I thought,

from my place of concealment, but still she made no sound that could

have penetrated much farther than I was distant from their interview.

"Not talk that way?" she repeated, and this time was silent for a

spell, as if she were herself considering the reasons why she should

not do so. There had been more of fright than menace, in the tone of

the man called Ivan, when he cautioned her, and I could imagine how

terrorized any member of the nihilistic fraternity must be if there

were the least danger that disloyal thoughts of theirs might find

lodgment in unsuspected places. "I will talk that way; I will talk as I

please; nor you, nor any one, shall stand between me and my liberty of

action and speech. What care I for all the murderers and assassins who

form this terrible society of which we are members? Hear me? They could

only swear my life away as they have done to others in many parallel

cases. They could only destroy me; and Ivan, sometimes, upon my bended

knees I pray for death. What matter would it be to me how death might

come, so long as I am prepared to welcome it? I hate and loathe myself

when I stop to consider all the contemptible acts I am compelled to

perform, when I pause to realize the utter prostitution of self-respect

I am forced to undergo, in order to carry on the plots of our 'good

friends,' as you call them. Good friends, indeed! To whom, let me ask

you, do they demonstrate the friendly spirit? Where can you point to a

friendly act done by any one of them, unless it is to a prisoner

already condemned, or to an assassin who is in danger of arrest? My own

life?" she laughed again. "Ivan, were it not that I honestly believe

that I can, by myself accomplish some great good in this undertaking, I

would destroy that life with my own hands; for I tell you that it would

be much easier to drive a poniard through my own heart, or to swallow a

cup of poison, than it is for me to make sport of the affections of

such men as the stately, generous Prince Michael, or that poor

love-sick fool, Morét. Hush! don't say another word to me on the

subject of warning, for it only angers me, and fills me with a contempt

which I find it difficult to master."




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