By Wit of Woman Part 16

That made him wince.

"By G.o.d, that hurts!" he muttered, and he leant back, put his hand to his eyes, and sat hunched up in silence. Presently he sighed. "You're right. I'm only a fool, am I?"

"If she cared for you, it might have hurt _her_ to know," I said.

"Don't, please. You make me think; and I don't want to think."

"If she loved you then, she would scarcely love you now."

"Don't, I say, don't," he cried, with sudden vehemence. "You are so like her that to hear this from you is almost as if----I beg your pardon. But for a moment I believe I was almost fool enough to feel something. No, no; don't write or do any other silly thing of the sort. It doesn't matter;" and he tossed up his hands helplessly.

We sat for a few moments without speaking, and presently he began to fumble in his pocket. He glanced at me rather shamefacedly, and then with an air of bravado took out a phial of morphia pills.

"Since you know, it doesn't matter," he said, half-apologetically.

"It does matter very much," I declared, earnestly.

He held the little bottle making ready to open it, and met my eyes.

"Why?"

"Would you take it if she were here?"

"I don't know;" and he heaved a deep sigh.

"Think that she is here, and then you daren't take it."

He laughed. "Daren't I?" and he partly unscrewed the cap.

I put my hand on his arm. "For her sake," I said.

"It means hours of h.e.l.l to me if I don't."

"It means a life of h.e.l.l if you do."

"I must."

"For her sake," I pleaded again, and held out my hand for the phial.

"You would torture me?"

"Yes, for your good."

The struggle in him was acute and searching. "It's no good; I can't,"

he murmured, his gaze on the phial.

I summoned all the will power at my command and forced him to meet my eyes. "For her sake; as if she were here; give it me," I said.

"I shall hate you if you make me."

"For her sake," I repeated. We looked each into the other's eyes, until I had conquered.

"I suppose I must," he murmured with a sigh; and let the little bottle fall into my hand. I threw it down and ground it and the pellets to powder with my heel. He watched me with a curious smile. "How savage you are. As if you thought that could finish it."

"No. It is only the beginning--but a good beginning."

He got up. "We'd better go now, before I begin to hate you."

"You will think of this and of her when the next temptation comes."

"Oh, it will come right enough; and I shan't resist it. I can't.

Good-bye. I like you yet. I--I wish I'd known you before."

And with that and a sigh and a smile, he lifted his hat and left me.

CHAPTER IX

I COME TO TERMS WITH MADAME

My interview with Karl led to a very disquieting discovery. I sat for some time thinking about it--and my thoughts increased rather than diminished my uneasiness.

To use a very expressive vulgarism one often hears at home, I began to fear that I "had run up against a snag." In other words, I had misunderstood the real nature of my feelings for Karl; and that miscalculation might cost me dear.

It was true that when I had seen him at Madame d'Artelle's I had hated him cordially; but the reason was clear to me now. It was not my pride that he had hurt in not recognizing me. It was my anger that he had stirred--that he should have forgotten me so completely. It looked so much like the due corollary of his old conduct that I had taken fire.

And now I found he had not forgotten me at all; and knew that I had won my little victory over him because he remembered me so well.

It was a surprise and a shock; but nothing like the shock it gave me to find how elated and delighted I felt at the fact. For a time I could scarcely hold that delight in check. It took the bit in its teeth and ran away with my sober common sense. My thoughts very nearly made a fool of me again; and I am afraid that I positively revelled in the new knowledge just as any ordinary girl might.

But, as I had told General von Erlanger, I was not a "usual person;"

and I succeeded in pulling up my runaway thoughts in the middle of their wild gallop.

I was no longer in love with Karl. I had settled that years before. I was intensely embittered by his conduct; he had behaved abominably to me; had flirted and cheated and fooled me; and I had always felt that I never could and never would forgive him. His present condition was a fitting and proper punishment, and he deserved every minute of it.

My interest in him now was purely selfish and personal. I had only one thing to consider in regard to him--how I could make use of him to secure justice to my father's reputation, and punishment for the doers of that great wrong.

Moreover, even if he did care, or thought he still cared for one whom he had so wronged, and if I were an ordinary girl and magnanimous enough to forgive him, and if, further, I could save him permanently from the opium fiend, we could never be more than mere friends. There was an insuperable barrier between us.

I knew this from the papers which my father had left behind him. I had better explain it here; for I thought it all carefully over as I sat that morning in the Stadtwalchen.

There was the great Patriotic movement in the way, of which Karl's father, Duke Ladislas, was the head and front. The aim was nothing less than the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hungary was to be made an independent kingdom, and Duke Ladislas was to have the throne.

The time to strike the great blow had been decided years before. It was to be at the death of the old Emperor. The movement had the widest ramifications; and the whole of the internal policy of Hungary was being directed to that paramount object.

In one of his papers, my father had suggested that the secret of his ruin was part and parcel of this scheme. While Duke Alexinatz and his son, Count Stephen, lived, the right to the Hungarian throne would be theirs; and thus, Duke Ladislas, a man of great ambition and the soul of the movement, had every reason to welcome Count Stephen's death; and that death had occurred at a moment when the Austrian Emperor lay so ill that his death was hourly expected.