By Right of Sword Part 22

"I will not listen! Didn't I tell you?" She was vehemence itself.

I shrugged my shoulders in despair.

"This morning..." I began; but the moment I opened my lips she broke out again with her vehement interruptions.

"Ah, things were different this morning. I had not then been insulted.

Do you forget I am a Russian; and think you can treat me as you will--keep me waiting while--bah! it is unbearable. Will you go away?

Is there no sense of manliness in you that will make you leave me?

Must I call for a.s.sistance? I will do that if you do not leave me.

You can write what you have to say. But, please, spare me the pain of seeing you again."

Her words cut me to the quick; but they roused me also.

"You had better call for a.s.sistance," I answered firmly. Then I crossed to the door, locked it, and put the key in my pocket. "I will spare you the pain of another interview; but now that I am here, I decline to go until I have explained."

"You cannot explain," she burst in. The word seemed to madden her.

"Cannot explain what?"

"That woman's kisses!"

The words appeared to leap from her lips involuntarily; and she repented them as soon as uttered; and drawing herself up she tried to appear cold and stolid. But this attempt failed completely; and in her anger at the thought behind the words and with herself for having given it utterance, she stood looking at me, her bosom heaving and tossing with agitation and her face and eyes aglow with an emotion, which with a strange delight, I saw was jealousy.

There came a long pause, during which I recalled her manner and the way she had played with my words, during one of our rides when we had spoken of Devinsky's proposal to make her his wife.

I have always been slow to read women's hearts and have generally read them wrong; but I began to study this with a sense of new and peculiar pleasure.

She was getting very dear to me for a sister.

If my guess was right, my conduct with that infernal women, Paula Tueski, must have been gall and wormwood to Olga.

How should I have relished it had the position been reversed, and Devinsky been in Paula Tueski's place?

These thoughts which flashed across me in rapid succession produced a peculiar frame of mind. I had stood a minute in silence, not looking at her, and when I raised my eyes again I was conscious of sensations toward her, that were altogether different from anything I had felt before. She had become more beautiful than ever in my eyes; I, more eagerly anxious to please and appease; while at bottom there was a dormant fear that I might be mistaken in my new reading of her actions, in which was mixed up another fear, not nearly so strong, that her anger on account of Paula Tueski might really end in our being separated.

My first act shewed the change in me.

I ceased to feel the freedom with which I had hitherto acted the part of brother, and I immediately threw open the door and stood aside that she might go out if she wished. Then I said:--

"Perhaps you are right. My conduct may be inexcusable even to save your life."

Whether there was anything in my manner that touched her--I was conscious of speaking with much less confidence than usual; or whether it was the act of unfastening the door: or whether, again, some subtle influence had set her thoughts moving in parallel columns to mine, I do not know. But her own manner changed quite as suddenly as mine; and when she caught my eyes on her, she flushed and paled with effects that made her radiantly beautiful to me.

She said not a word; and finding this, I continued:--

"I am sorry a cloud has come between us at the last, and through something that was not less hateful to me because forced by the needs of the case. We have been such friends; but...." here I handed her the permit--"you must use this at once."

She took it and read it slowly in silence, and then asked:--

"How did you get this?"

"Myself, personally, from the Chief of the Police."

"Why did you run the mad risk of going to him yourself?"

"There was no risk--not so much in going to him as in keeping away from him. He had tried to have me murdered, and I went to find out the reason."

"I told you I would not leave."

"Unless--and the condition now applies--it was necessary for my safety."

"And you?" The light of fear was in her eyes as she asked this.

"As soon as you are across the frontier I shall make a dash for my liberty also. I can't go before, because my absence would certainly bring you under suspicion."

She looked at me again very intently, her head bent slightly forward and her lips parted with the strain of a new thought; while suspicion of my motive chased the fear for my safety from her face.

"Is this to get me out of the way? I won't go!"

"Olga!"

All my honour for myself and my love for her were in that note of reproach, and they appeared to waken an echo; for then this most strange girl threw herself down on to a couch and burying her face in her hands sobbed pa.s.sionately.

I turned away from the sight of her emotion--the more painful because of the strong self-reserve and force of character she had always shewn--and paced up and down the room. I forced back my own feelings and the desire to tell her what those feelings were. To do that would be worse than madness. Till we were out of Russia, we were brother and sister and the bar between us was heavier than we could hope to move.

When the storm of her sobs ceased, she remained for some minutes quite still: and I would not break the silence, knowing she was fighting her way back to self-possession.

Presently, she got up and came to me, holding out her hand.

"I will go, Alexis--we are still firm friends?"--with a little smile of wistful interrogation. "Can you forgive my temper? I was mad for the moment, I think. But I trust you. I do indeed, absolutely. I know you had no thought of insulting me. I know that. I couldn't think so meanly of you. It's hard to leave--Russia--and--and everything. And you, too--at this time. Must I really go?" A half-beseeching glance into my eyes and a pause for the answer I could not give. "Very well.

I know what your silence means. Come to-morrow morning--and say"--she stopped again and bit her trembling lips to steady them as she framed the word--"and say--goodbye to me. And now, please, let me go--brother and truest friend."

She wrung my hand, and then before I could prevent her or even guess her intention, she pressed her lips to it and, with the tears again in her eyes, she went quickly away, leaving me to stare after her like a helpless fool, longing to call her back and tell her everything, and yet afraid.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE DEED WHICH RANG THROUGH RUSSIA.

It was not destined that Olga should leave Russia yet.

A terrible event happened within the next few hours, the report of which rang through Russia like a clap of thunder, convulsing the whole nation, and shaking for the moment the entire social fabric to its lowest foundations. And one of its smaller consequences was to ruin my plans and expose me to infinite personal peril.

Olga was to start at noon, and I proposed to see her an hour before then, for what I knew would be a very trying ordeal. But I was at that hour in the midst of a very different kind of interview.

Outside official circles I was one of the first men to learn the news.