"I did not have an opportunity, for you never asked me to do so," said
the soft tones of the princess immediately behind me; and as I turned
she added: "but these rooms are suffocating, so if you will give me
your arm now, Mr. Dubravnik, we will lead the way, and perhaps the
others will follow. I know that the gentlemen are longing for an
opportunity to smoke."
"Dubravnik was on the point of leaving us," the prince called after
her. "You arrived just in time, princess. Perhaps you can persuade him
to change his mind."
"Were you contemplating suicide, Mr. Dubravnik?" she asked laughing;
but there was an undercurrent of gravity in her question which was
deeply significant.
"Something very like it," I replied, as gravely, "since I was about to
leave your presence."
"Supposing you to be serious"--and I felt that her hand unconsciously
tightened its clasp upon my arm as we moved away--"would it not be
better for me to do the deed, than for you?"
"I am afraid that the supposition is altogether too foreign to my
nature for me to entertain it, princess."
We had entered the garden, and a throng of guests were trooping after
us. I glanced down at my companion, and saw that she was regarding me
rather anxiously through her lashes.
"Suicide is the only solution for all problems at once," she said.
"Pardon me; it is the solution for only one."
"Only one? What is that?"
"Moral cowardice."
"But there may be circumstances where it offers the only means of
escape from an alternative that is infinitely worse, Mr. Dubravnik." We
were in the act of passing one of the little side paths, and I drew her
into it, noticing that there was just a suggestion of resistance from
my companion when I did so; but it was only for an instant. Then, as I
paused abruptly underneath one of the green shaded globes, she added,
as though she knew that I perfectly understood her: "I have really been
considering the subject quite seriously."
I looked down at her. The green hue of the light above us seemed to
have transformed her into a spirit. It had changed the color of her
dress, of her hair, and it had touched her cheeks as with a magic wand
which softened and heightened every feature. Instead of transforming
her into something that she was not, I was convinced that it brought
her back from what she was not to what she really was. At all events, I
realized that she was in deadly earnest.
In that moment I felt again all the spell of this woman's charm as she
stood before me, beneath the glow of that shaded light, looking up into
my face with her beautiful eyes now widened with serious concern, with
her full, lithe, graceful body pulsing with life so close to mine,
while she talked calmly, and seriously I knew, too, of destroying it by
her own act.