He pushed back her hair with a rough caress.
"It's all right, _ma chere_. You needn't be afraid. I shall not be
here to advise you soon, and all I have to say now is, never imagine
yourself secure for an instant. Sobrenski is bound to discover this in
the course of time, and he has seen this sort of thing before, which
will not make him any more merciful. He has watched human nature long
enough to know that where there is what you would call love, people
want to create, they no longer want to destroy. If, as you say, you
have made no plans, then make them. And now you'd better go to bed,
unless you want to look more like a ghost than usual to-morrow."
As he went out into the moonlit street Emile knew that he had taken the
first step on his _Via Crucis_. He did not call it that, for of
religion in the orthodox sense he possessed nothing, but he knew that
his feet were set upon the path where snow and blood would mingle in
his footprints. He was going back to Russia, where death would be a
thing to be welcomed and desired. He had listened to the tales of
escaped prisoners, and he knew that no words could exaggerate this
frozen Hell in which flourished vices unnamable, where men rotted
alive, and women strangled themselves with their own hair, or cut their
throats with a scrap of glass to escape the brutalities of a gaoler or
Cossack guard.
Pages:
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241