"As your wife?" said Ziska slowly, her dark eyes gleaming with a
strange light as she dexterously withdrew herself from his
embrace.

He uttered an impatient exclamation.

"My wife! Dieu! What a banalite! You, with your exquisite, glowing
beauty and voluptuous charm, you would be a 'wife'--that tiresome
figure-head of utterly dull respectability? You, with your
unmatched air of wild grace and freedom, would submit to be tied
down in the bonds of marriage,--marriage, which to my thinking and
that of many other men of my character, is one of the many curses
of this idiotic nineteenth century! No, I offer you love, Ziska!--
ideal, passionate love!--the glowing, rapturous dream of ecstasy
in which such a thing as marriage would be impossible, the merest
vulgar commonplace--almost a profanity."

"I understand!" and the Princess Ziska regarded him intently, her
breath coming and going, and a strange smile quivering on her
lips. "You would play the part of an Araxes over again!"

He smiled; and with all the audacity of a bold and determined
nature, put his arms round her and drew her close up to his
breast.

"Yes," he said, "I would play the part of an Araxes over again!"

As he uttered the words, an indescribable sensation of horror
seized him--a mist darkened his sight, his blood grew cold, and a