By all the saints, no! I will keep my children for Olga's sake. I will let my wretched country go. What matter to me? I will make a new home in this free land and forget. Ah, God! Forget? I can never forget! These plains!" He tore aside the quilt from the window and stooping looked out upon the prairie. "These plains say Russia! This gleaming snow, Russia! Ah! Ah! Ah! I cannot forget, while I live, my people, my fatherland. I have suffered too much to forget. God forget me, if I forget!" He fell on his knees before the window, dry sobs shaking his powerful frame. He rose and began again to stride up and down, his hands locked before him. Suddenly he stood quite still, making mighty efforts to regain command of himself. For some moments he stood thus rigid.
The woman, who had been kneeling all the while, crept to his feet.
"My lord will give his children to me," she said in a low voice.
"You!" he cried, drawing back from her. "You! What could you do for them?"
"I could die for them," she said simply, "and for my lord."
"For me! Ha!" His voice carried unutterable scorn.
She cowered back to the floor.
"My children I can slay, but I will leave them in no house of lust."
"Oh!" she cried, clasping her hands upon her breast and swaying backwards and forwards upon her knees, "I will be a good woman. I will sin no more. Rosenblatt I shall send--"
"Rosenblatt!" cried the man with a fierce laugh. "After two days Rosenblatt will not be here."
"You will--?" gasped the woman.
"He will die," said the man quietly.
"Oh, my lord! Let me kill him! It would be easy for me at night when he sleeps. But you they will take and hang. In this country no one escapes. Oh! Do not you kill him. Let me."
Breathlessly she pleaded, holding him by the feet. He spurned her with contempt.
"Peace, fool! He is for none other than me. It is an old score.
Ah, yes," he continued between his teeth, "it is an old score. It will be sweet to feel him slowly die with my fingers in his throat."
"But they will take you," cried the woman.
"Bah! They could not hold me in Siberia, and think you they can in this land? But the children," he mused. "Rosenblatt away." With a sudden resolve he turned to the woman. "Woman," he said, in a voice stern and low, "could you--"
She threw herself once more at his feet in a passion of entreaty.
"Oh, my lord! Let me live for them, for them--and--for you!"
"For me?" he said coldly. "No. You have dishonoured my name. You are wife of mine no longer. Do you hear this?"
"Yes, yes," she panted, "I hear. I know. I ask nothing for myself. But the children, your children. I would live for them, would die for them!"
He turned from her and gazed through the window, pondering. That she would be faithful to the children he well knew. That she would gladly die for him, he was equally certain. With Rosenblatt removed, the house would be rid of the cause of her fall and her shame. There was no one else in this strange land to whom he could trust his children. Should death or exile take him in his work--and these were always his companions--his children would be quite alone. Once more he turned and looked down upon the kneeling woman. He had no love for her. He had never loved her. Simply as a matter of convenience he had married her, that she might care for the children of his dead wife whom he had loved with undying and passionate love.
"Paulina," he said solemnly, but the contempt was gone from his voice, "you are henceforth no wife of mine; but my children I give into your care."
Hitherto, during the whole interview, she had shed no tear, but at these words of his she flung her arms about his knees and burst into a passion of weeping.
"Oh, my lord! My dear lord! Oh, my lord! my lord!" she sobbed, wildly kissing his very boots.
He drew away from her and sat down upon a bench.
"Listen," he said. "I will send you money. You will require to take no man into your house for your support. Is there any one to whom I could send the money for you?"
She thought for a few moments.
"There is one," she said, "but she does not love me. She will come no longer into my house. She thinks me a bad woman." Her voice sank low. Her face flamed a dark red.
"Aha," said the man, "I would see that woman. To-morrow you will bring me to her. At dusk to-morrow I will pass your house. You will meet me. Now go."
She remained kneeling in her place. Then she crawled nearer his feet.
"Oh, my lord!" she sobbed, "I have done wrong. Will you not beat me? Beat me till the blood runs down. He was too strong for me.
I was afraid for the children. I had no place to go. I did a great wrong. If my lord would but beat me till the blood runs down, it would be a joy to me."
It was the cry of justice making itself heard through her dull soul. It was the instinctive demand for atonement. It was the unconscious appeal for reinstatement to the privileges of wifehood.
"Woman," he said sternly, "a man may beat his wife. He will not strike a woman that is nothing to him. Go."
Once more she clutched his feet, kissing them. Then she rose and without a word went out into the dusky night. She had entered upon the rugged path of penitence, the only path to peace for the sinner.
After she had gone, the man stepped to the door and looked after her as if meditating her recall.
"Bah!" he said at length, "she is nothing to me. Let her go."
He put out the light, closed the door and passing through the crowd of revellers, went off to Simon's house.
