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 CHAPTER XXII

THE HOUR OF INDECISION

My anticipations of the interview with Christina were a mingling of pleasure and apprehension. I was longing to see her. I had not set eyes on her for four days, and, busily as the time had been filled, my thoughts had been constantly with her. I recalled, too, with a feeling of mixed tenderness and pain, how she had then said we must not meet again alone, and at the recollection my pulses thrilled again with the sad sweetness of our acknowledged but never to be avowed love.

The knowledge of her present danger moved me deeply. I had to tell her the ill news myself, and, in telling it, to urge her to take the course which I knew must put an impassable gulf between us. It had been easy enough for me, in consultation with Zoiloff, when we were both staggered by this new development, to decide for the counsel of energy and to choose the course which, while loyal to Christina, my Princess, was traitor to Christina, my love. But if she would fly the country, there would be no longer the barrier of a throne between us.

And in the minutes I was alone waiting for her coming, the thought of all I was to lose in losing her, and of all I was to gain if she would consent to flight, threatened to make a coward of me and urged me to plead with all a lover's strength that she should choose the course which would make her my wife. Away