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once again that you love me." Her answer was a burst of tears, and for a time she could find no other expression for her emotions; and while these lasted, she clung to me the more tightly, so that when, at last, the storm did come to an end, her lips were closely against my ear, and I heard the whispered words: "I do love you." But instantly she started away from me, and she cried out. "Wait! wait, Dubravnik! I remember, now, that I had begun to tell you a story. I was telling you what made me a nihilist." "Yes." "I will finish the story, if you will let me." "Finish it," I said; "but do so while my arm is around you, and with your head resting against my shoulder. Let me hold you here, where you are, so that I may know I will not lose you again. You are a creature of such changing impulses. That half-wild nature of yours is sometimes so violent in its conclusions. Tell me the story, Zara. I will listen to it." CHAPTER XV THE MURDER OF A SOUL Zara did as I requested. She seated herself upon the divan, and I sat beside her, with my arm around her. She rested her head against my shoulder, and in a low and dreamy tone she began, as if there had been no hiatus, the continuation of that story which was to thrill me as nothing else of the kind had ever done. You must understand that she was pleading for my life, as she believed, in the relation of this bit of history which I was soon to learn had touched her so closely. She believed that my life could be saved only by means of my joining with the nihilists, in consenting to take their oath, and to become one with them. I have often, at retrospective moments, gone back again to that hour, and lived it over in thought, wondering how I could still resist her when I listened to the passion of her utterances, and to a recital of the terrible wrongs that had been visited upon those whom Zara loved, in the name of the czar. As before, she told the story as if I had been the participant in it; as if the young woman whose history it touched most closely, had been my own sister. In the retelling of it, I purposely render it as concise as possible, but I am utterly incapable of imparting to it the dramatic effect of her recital, heightened and added to by her warm sympathies. "Remember," she said, "that I am representing you as the brother of this poor girl, Dubravnik. You, and your sister Yvonne, orphaned in your youth, occupied together the gre
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