to which I shall be delivered; from the
death, or worth than death, which their sleuth-hounds will mete out to
me."

"Death! Good heavens, what have you been doing?"

She laughed, glanced round the room, caught up the paper which lay
where he had put it down, and pointed to the column which he had read.

"That!" she cried.

"That? What do you mean?"

"I mean that I killed that man," she answered, deliberately. "I placed
the infernal machine by his door, and so took the vengeance which I
swore to take a year ago, when he took prisoner and gave to torture and
death my lover. I failed once, I failed twice; last night I succeeded.
He is dead!"

"You murdered this man?

"Yes, as my lover was murdered, as my brother was murdered, as my
mother and my sister are being murdered in Siberia, as my father died,
murdered in the dungeons of St. Peter and St. Paul. And for what? For
daring to act, to speak, to read, to think; for striving to be men and
women, for revolting against the horrible tyranny which crushed them as
it crushes millions! That was their crime. Bah! what do you know, you
English, of brutality, of force, of cruelty, of slavery? You play with
the words, and think you have the thing!"

She looked at him as he shrank from her, horrified, unable to grasp or
believe her words. Again she laughed bitterly, and, putting her hand
into the bosom of her dress, drew out a little roll of paper, and held
it toward him. The Doctor drew back. It had suddenly become horrible.
He faltered:

"What is it?"

"The last lines of farewell which my lover contrived to have sent to me
from his prison the day before they butchered him," she answered,
steadily. "He bade me farewell, and called upon me to avenge him. It
was redder then than now, for even the blood of an innocent man fades
with time; and he wrote this with his blood. With it in my hand, with
the memory of his face, when they dragged him away from me forever,
always before me, I swore I would obey his last prayer. It is done. His
murderer is dead!"

She spoke with an air of dreary triumph, a dreadful exultation that
chilled her listener's blood. This was not the woman he had loved, upon
whom he had poured out all his long-guarded stores of devotion and
passion--this terrible, beautiful, avenging Medusa! His utter confusion
and bewilderment were patent to her; as he sank into a chair, she drew
a pace nearer to him, speaking rapidly, never pausing except when he
hi