ng with dilating eyes toward the window, as footsteps
approached. They passed, and she turned back again, once more drawing a
step nearer to him, fascinating him with the light of her brilliant
inflexible eyes.

"Sir, listen again. You have been deceived, as I have shown, but you do
not know how much. You recollect the day upon which you saw me first?"

"Yes."

"I told you that I had been robbed; it was a lie. The man that you saw
attack me meant to murder me."

"To murder you?"

"Yes. Sir, once more. You don't know what they are, these secret
societies, these hidden leagues moulded by Russian oppression and
tyranny, these cliques, of which hate, vengeance, extermination, are
the watchwords. Knowing so well what treachery is, they are jealous of
the faith of their members. Death punishes treachery, and I had been
treacherous, and death was my sentence. The Cause avenges itself; the
appointed man accepted his appointed task. The man who threatened you
that night--that old man, our chief--saved me."

George Brudenell passed his hand over his forehead. The feeling which
had assailed him when he was a prisoner in the mysterious house
assailed him again--the involuntary doubt as to the reality of what he
saw and heard. Still with her relentless eyes fixed upon him, she went
on:

"I had been treacherous--I will tell you how. There belonged to us a
lad, a boy, almost a child--he was innocent, simple; he was our errand
boy, cat's-paw--what you will; and he did what you have done, fell in
love with me--because I am beautiful, perhaps. Bah! Many men have
loved me--it is nothing. We suspected him, thought him false; with the
Cause to suspect is to condemn. He was condemned, and to me was
allotted the task of striking him. I meant to do it, I swore to do it.
At the last moment my courage failed me--perhaps I pitied him--and I
spared him. The sentence passed upon him was passed also upon me."

"And he?"

"He?" She met his look with a gloomy smile. "The Cause does not forgive
unless for its own good, as it afterward forgave me. Our chief absolved
me, for I was useful--so useful that my one act of treachery, my one
moment of weakness, was condoned. For him--what was he? An
untrustworthy tool merely. Another hand struck the blow which I had
been appointed to strike. He died as I nearly died." She stopped and
smiled in the same gloomy way. "No suspicion struck you when his body
lay there yonder, and I stood beside you, looki