"They have done so more than once, princess." 

 "You make me hate myself—and you." 

 "I am afraid that you took me too literally," he said, with perfect composure, for although he knew that he had angered her, she was yet so beautiful in her impetuous resentment of his words that he was lost in admiration. Indeed he had uttered no more than the truth when he told her that he might even forsake the cause if such a woman as Zara could have been his reward; and he knew by long years of experience, that he uttered the sentiments of nine men out of ten who might fall under her influence. 

 "My mission is accomplished here," she told him, "and already my passage is engaged for the return voyage. I leave New York at once and I shall probably never return to it. What you have told me of the measures taken in our behalf, has encouraged me greatly; and yet because of one thing you have said, I dread the return to St. Petersburg." 

 "What was that, princess?" 

 "I must correct myself. You intimated it; you did not say it." 

 "What was it?" 

 "You suggested, in one statement you made, that you had reason to fear that the spy-system as arrayed against us at home, might be augmented by the addition of skilled operators and experts from this country. I had thought that we nihilists had a monopoly of that sort of employment, and that the czar and his nobles could claim only the loyalty of their own spies. But your suggestion fills me with doubt and dread. If Alexander were to introduce imported spies among our people——" 

 He interrupted the princess by laughing heartily. 

 "Again you took me too literally," he asserted. "Here and there, there may be one who will seek Russia and the czar for such employment, but it will be for the emolument it will bring, and cannot be induced by patriotic sentiment. We would have little cause to dread such people, since we would not be long in identifying them, and ultimately I believe they would assist, rather than retard our efforts." 

 "Perhaps so." 

 "There can be no doubt of your own loyalty to our cause, princess?" 

 "Certainly not." 

 "Are the others like you? Pardon me, there can be no others like you for there could never be another so beautiful 

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