y because God gave me the beauty and the power.
I hate it; oh, how I hate it! Suppose that Jean Moret _is_ dead,
who, then, in God's name is responsible for his death? I, I alone!
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