To what end should I narrate anew the terrible story which is known to all? Must I dip again into the soilure and abomination of that awful time? How dare I tell of the luring telegrams sent to the distant Naumoff, my guileless and impassioned lover, and of the joy and gratitude with which he hastened to me? How describe the slow, insidious poisoning of his mind against Kamarowsky, the hatred subtly instilled in him against that unconscious, kindly man? And the lies, the slanders, the ambiguous disclosures of pretended outrages inflicted upon me, of insults and injuries I feigned to have suffered at Kamarowsky's hands?...

Naumoff believed it all. His astonishment and indignation knew no bounds. What? Kamarowsky, whom he had always thought the most chivalrous and considerate of men, was a despicable, worthless coward? Well, Naumoff would challenge him; he would fight a duel to the death with him who had been his best friend.

But not that, not that was what I wanted. Tioka recovered. Taller, thinner and paler, he came out once more into the sunshine, leaning on my arm, enraptured at everything, greeting every ray of light and every winged or flowering thing as if it were a new acquaintance.

Not for an instant did I suffer my mind to waver. God, the terrible God of my disordered fancy, had accepted the compact, and it was now for me to carry it out.

As soon as Tioka was well enough to travel, I sent him to Russia to some of our relations. While I was discharging my debt for his life, he must be far away.

Then began the ghastly game, the sinister comedy with the three puppets, whose strings I held in my fragile hands. I had to tranquilize and disarm Kamarowsky; to kindle and fan the murderous fury of Prilukoff; and above all to enchain and infatuate Naumoff, so as to impel him to the crime.

Ah, every art that Lilith, daughter of Eve and of the Serpent, has bequeathed to woman, every insidious perversity and subtle wile did I bring into play to charm and enamor this youthful dreamer. With every incitement did I lure and tempt him; with every witchery did I entangle him in the meshes of my perversity and in the whirlwind of my golden hair.

I was indeed the modern Circe, weaving her evil spell. I was fervent and temerarious, full of exotic anomalies, eccentric, unexpected.... I delighted in causing him both pleasure and suffering in a thousand unnatural and outrageous ways; I cut my initials in his arm with the triangular blade of a dagger; I pressed my lighted cigarette upon his hand; I assumed all the absurdities, perversities and puerilities with which since time immemorial woman has decoyed and beguiled man, who, after all, is essentially a simple-minded and ingenuous being.

Nicolas Naumoff was dazed and fascinated by all this strange hysteria and subtlety. He believed himself to be the hero of a fabulous passion—the incomparable conqueror of a wondrous and portentous love.

There were times when I myself was carried away by this play of my own invention. Now and then I lost sight of the grim purpose of this process of seduction; I rejoiced in my own coquetries, and myself burned in the flame I had deliberately kindled. One evening as he knelt before me, pressing my cool hands against his fevered forehead, I bent over him with a smile.

“Why do you love me so much?” I asked. “Tell me. Tell me the truth.”

He answered me gravely in a deep voice, enumerating the reasons on my fingers as he held them in his own.

“I love you because you are beautiful and terrible. Because you have that white, subtle face, and that mouth that is like a greedy rose, and those long, cruel eyes ... I love you because you are different from all others, better or worse than all, more intelligent and more passionate than all.” He was silent for a moment. “And also because you have forced me to love you.”

Yes. I had forced him to love me. And now he was what I wanted him to be—an instrument ready to my hand: a fierce and docile instrument of death, a submissive and murderous weapon.

June crept warmly up from the south, and murmured of blue waters and dancing sunlight.

“Mura, let us go to Venice,” said Paul Kamarowsky one afternoon as he sat beside me on the balcony; “let us pass these last three months of waiting at the Lido. If needs be, I can take you back to Russia later on, to complete the few formalities that must precede our marriage.”

“To Venice?” I said faintly.

Paul Kamarowsky smiled.

he quoted under his breath. And bending forward, he kissed my trembling lips.