Part 28 (2/2)
But she knew as she looked at him that he was beyond all hearing.
His splendid eyes blazed with the pa.s.sion of a wild beast. She knew if she resisted him he would kill her. Well, better death than this hideous disgrace.
He held her from him for a second, and then lifted her in his arms.
But with the strength of terrified madness she grasped his wounded arm, and in the second in which he made a sudden wince, she gave an eel-like twist and slipped from his grasp, and as she did so she seized the pistol in his belt and stood erect while she placed the muzzle to her own white forehead.
”Touch me again, and I will shoot!” she gasped, and sank down on the bench almost exhausted behind the rough wooden table.
He made a step forward, but she lifted the pistol again to her head and leant her arm on the board to steady herself. And thus they glared at one another, the hunter and the hunted.
”This is very clever of you, Madame,” he said; ”but do you think it will avail you anything? You can sit like that all night, if you wish, but before dawn I will take you.”
Tamara did not answer.
Then he flung himself on the couch and lit a cigarette, and all that was savage and cruel in him flamed from his eyes.
”My G.o.d! what do you think it has been like since the beginning?” he said. ”Your silly prudish fears and airs. And still I loved you--madly loved you. And since the night when I kissed your sweet lips you have made me go through h.e.l.l--cold and provoking and disdainful, and last night when you defied me, then I determined you should belong to me by force; and now it is only a question of time. No power in heaven or earth can save you--Ah! if you had been different, how happy we might have been! But it is too late; the devil has won, and soon I will do what I please.”
Tamara never stirred, and the strain of keeping the pistol to her head made her wrist ache.
For a long time there was silence, and the great heat caused a mist to swim before her eyes, and an overpowering drowsiness--Oh, heaven!--if unconsciousness should come upon her!
Then the daylight faded quite, and the Prince got up and lit a small oil lamp and set it on the shelf. He opened the stove and let the glow from the door flood through the room.
Then he sat down again.
A benumbing agony crept over Tamara; her brain grew confused in the hot, airless room. It seemed as if everything swam round her. All she saw clearly were Gritzko's eyes.
There was a deathly silence, but for an occasional moan of the wind in the pine trees. The drift of snow without showed white as it gradually blocked the window.
Were they buried here--under the snow? Ah! she must fight against this horrible lethargy.
It was a strange picture. The rough hut room with its skins and antlers; the fair, civilized woman, delicate and dainty in her soft silk blouse, sitting there with the grim Cossack pistol at her head--and opposite her, still as marble, the conquering savage man, handsome and splendid in his picturesque uniform; and just the dull glow of the stove and the one oil lamp, and outside the moaning wind and the snow.
Presently Tamara's elbow slipped and the pistol jerked forward. In a second the Prince had sprung into an alert position, but she straightened herself, and put it back in its place, and he relaxed the tension, and once more reclined on the couch.
And now there floated through Tamara's confused brain the thought that perhaps it would be better to shoot in any case--shoot and have done with it. But the instinct of her youth stopped her--suicide was a sin, and while she did not reason, the habit of this belief kept its hold upon her.
So an hour pa.s.sed in silence, then the agonizing certainty came upon her that there must be an end. Her arm had grown numb.
Strange lights seemed to flash before her eyes--Yes,--surely--that was Gritzko coming toward her--!
She gave a gasping cry and tried to pull the trigger, but it was stiff, her fingers had gone to sleep and refused to obey her. The pistol dropped from her nerveless grasp.
So this was the end! He would win.
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