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