Neither does an elderly man who is sitting at the desk rise or come to meet me. He looks at me steadily and asks me many questions; but I pay no heed to him. The windows are open; I can hear the sound of a piano very far away; somebody is practising a romance by Chaminade that I used to play at Otrada.... How sad a piano sounds when played by an unseen hand in the silence of a sunlit street!

The man at the desk speaks in German to the uniformed men; they take my golden wristbag from me, and conduct me out of the bare room down a long passage. As I go slowly forward between the two men I notice that from the far end of the passage a group of people are coming towards us. In the center of the group walks a man, handcuffed and wearing his hat crookedly at the back of his head, as if placed there by some other hand than his own. It is Prilukoff!

He sees me. A wave of livid pallor overspreads his face. Then he bends forward towards me and makes a movement with his lips, pressing them tightly together and shaking his head; he is trying to make me understand something. As they notice this the men at my side grasp my arm and make me turn quickly down another corridor. But I hear Prilukoff's voice shouting after me. He utters a Russian word: “Molci!” (Be silent).

The men thrust me rudely into an empty cell. I sit down on a bench fixed in a corner under the small, barred window and lean my head against the wall. I feel neither unhappy nor afraid; only weary, unspeakably weary; and almost at once I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. Never since I was a child at Otrada have I known such perfect rest—such utter oblivion poured upon such limitless weariness.

Suddenly my door is opened abruptly and one of the men enters; he takes me by the arm, and conducts me back to the large, bare room, where the elderly official still sits at his desk. And there, standing before him, I see Elise. She is weeping bitterly. I see her making those comical grimaces which always accompany her tears, as in Italy cheerful music accompanies a child's funeral. My mind—like a frightened bat that has flown into a room and darts hither and thither—flutters and plunges wildly through all my past life. I think of my mother, of little Peter, and of Bozevsky; I remember a pink dress I once wore here in Vienna, at a reception of the Russian Embassy.... I think of little Tioka and his days for saying “No.” … How far, how far away it all is! What a gulf of guilt and sorrow have my tottering footsteps traversed since then.... But now—now I will climb tremblingly, devoutly, the steep road that leads back to safety; humbled to my knees I will pour out my thanks. For Paul Kamarowsky is saved; he lives and will recover!

The man at my side is dragging me roughly forward. The elderly official at the desk has beckoned to me, and as I stand before him in a line with Elise he reads aloud from a sheet of foolscap. Suddenly I hear the words: “Complicity in the murder of Count Paul Kamarowsky....”

The murder? The murder!

Two of the uniformed men hold my arms.

“But,” I try to say, with chattering teeth, “Count Kamarowsky lives … he will recover.”

The man replies, “Count Kamarowsky is dead.”

I laugh out loud. The car on the switchback rushes, whirls, plunges—falls with me to destruction.

XLII

Like a dream within a dream.—Poe.

It was in the prison infirmary that I first heard the details of what had passed in the Villa Santa Maria del Giglio, on that fatal morning of August the 3rd. As the nursing sister sat beside me, renewing from time to time the cold bandages placed on my throbbing forehead, she told me in low tones the mournful and tragic story. I listened as if I were listening in a dream to the story of a dream.

“When (she said) at early morning the Venetian servant-girl heard a knock at the door she went to open it, and a pale youth stepped quickly across the threshold. He asked for Count Kamarowsky, and bade the girl tell him that Nicolas Naumoff, of Orel, had arrived and desired to see him. The girl went to her master's door and knocked. He was awake and had risen. On hearing her message, he hurried out to meet his friend, for he loved him like a brother—”

(“Ah, sister, I know, I know! He loved him like a brother!”)

“When he saw Naumoff come in he went forward to meet him with open arms. The young man raised his hand and fired five shots point blank into his body. The Count fell to the ground; but even then he stretched out his arms to the young man and said: 'My friend, why have you done this to me? In what way have I ever harmed you?' The young man, with a cry as if he had awakened from a dream, flung himself on the ground at his feet. Then the wounded man showed him the balcony from which he might escape, and with fast-ebbing breath forgave him and bade him farewell.”

(“Oh, sister, sister, with fast-ebbing breath he forgave him and bade him farewell!”)

“He was carried to the hospital, and the doctors wanted to give him chloroform while they probed the gaping, deep-seated wounds; but he would not take it. 'Do what you have to do without sending me to sleep,' he said. 'I shall have plenty of time to sleep—afterwards.' The doctors groped for the bullets in the lacerated flesh, and stitched up the five, deep-seated wounds.... When it was over he asked for you.”

(“Sister, sister, he asked for me!”)

“He begged that you might be summoned quickly, and many telegrams were sent, but you neither came nor replied.”

(“I neither came nor replied!”)

“On the third day he was better. He spoke to those around him, and again he asked for you, and hoped that you would come. In the hospital he was in the hands of an old and very famous surgeon; but alas! as Fate would have it—”

(“What? what? As Fate would have it—?”)

“As Fate would have it, the mind of this old and celebrated surgeon suddenly gave way. None knew that anything was amiss, as he stood that day at the bedside of the sufferer whom his skill had saved. He spoke to his assistants in the same calm, authoritative voice as usual, but he ordered that the stitches should be taken out of the five wounds that were just beginning to heal. Those around him recoiled in amazement. They were thunderstruck. But he repeated the disastrous order in the voice of one who is accustomed to command and to save lives that are in peril. Then—”

(“What then? What then?”)

“Then the assistants, doubting their own wisdom, but not that of the man who had been their master, obeyed, and reopened the five deep-seated wounds which were just beginning to heal. And again, as Fate would have it—”

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