For a space we looked into each other's eyes across the short distance
that separated us. We were reading each other's souls, and both saw and
understood all that the heart of love could desire. It was an
undiscovered country to each of us, upon which we trod just then; a new
creation that was the sweeter because of its strangeness.
"I love you!" Zara whispered; and she came nearer until her hands
rested upon my shoulders, until her face was close to mine so that I
could feel her sweet breath against me. Her lips were parted slightly
in a half smile, and I knew that she had forgotten the waiting
karetta with its freight of assassins.
I took her in my arms, slowly, tenderly, firmly. I held her pressed
closely against me for a moment and then my lips sought hers, and hers
sought mine. It was a oneness of desire, a singleness of purpose that
brought us together in the kiss of perfect love; and we remained so
while minutes sped. I closed my eyes and held her the more tightly
against me, so that I could feel the throbbing of her heart and the
quivering eagerness of her lithe body, warm against my own. We forgot
the dangers and perils that surrounded us; forgot the world and all it
contained; forgot life and death, czars and their empires, nihilists
and their plots, remembering nothing, in that great spasm of adoration.
We did not speak. There was no occasion for words. There came no
opportunity to utter them. But we breathed, and breathed together. Our
hearts throbbed in unison. Our souls communed, intermingled, blended
into one. We sighed together, thought together, until my own senses
reeled under the strain of it, and I knew that Zara was more than half
unconscious of all things save her present contact with me. Ah, heaven,
the greatness of it! The magnificence of that moment! The rapture of
her caress, and the great joy of mine to her!
Presently I felt her clinging arms relax and I guided her tenderly
toward a huge chair. I lifted her as if she were a child and put her
softly down among the cushions; and I dropped to my knees, still
holding her, still with my arms wound tightly around her.
For a long time after that we were silent, and Zara was the first to
rouse from our mutual revery.
"Dubravnik," she said, and you can have no idea how sweetly that name
was made to sound by her utterance of it, "I have not yet completed the
story I was telling you; but there is only a little more, and you must
hear it."
"Yes," I replied. "As you will, Zara. I am content. But need we go
more deeply into the sorrows of that poor girl and her suffering
brother? Let us rather talk of the great joy that has come to us.
There seems to be nothing but joy in the world, when I look into your
eyes. Ah, little one, it is sweet indeed to be loved by you."