She who had the blood in her of lascivious empresses, and of fierce murderers of men, was swayed by two unfamiliar and divided things--by conscience, and compassion. The tide of freshly-roused emotions, which would have swept her onward to the gratification of them without thought or pause, was checked by a sentiment as rare--the sentiment of mercy. Once, one of her people, in the dark days of Natalia Narischkine's rule, being of those who slew in the name of the idiot, Ivan, had slaughtered the Narischkine right and left, not pausing for age or youth, or sex, but, coming to the place where a young child of the hated race lay sleeping, had dropped his blood-red sword in shame, as before some holy image, faltered, and turned away; the child had slept on unharmed. Such hesitation as that was with her now, born out of the very faults of her nature, out of her disdain, of her hauteur, of her superb self-love.
She was conscious of a desire to be in the presence of Othmar, to hear his voice, to see his face again; a desire enervating, vague, full of a dangerous languor, and a dangerous warmth; beyond that, stimulating and sustaining it, were the instincts of empire, of dominion, of a capricious and ever-victorious volition. Never in all her life had she resisted an impulse of self-indulgence, had she hesitated before any sacrifice of others. Absence had increased the shadowy attraction which had always drawn her towards this one amongst her many lovers; in the long silent months of her solitude his memory had grown dearer and more welcome with each day. And he was hers, if she chose.
At her command all honour, duty and allegiance would be mere empty words on his ear, without power to hold him, or meaning to move him. Dignity, self-respect, and loyalty to his self-chosen vows would become no more to him than threads of silk upon the neck of a courser broke loose. She had only to let him enter there, and the world would hold nothing for him but herself.
And for once she might perchance be able to share that oblivion, to comprehend that ecstasy; and yet she hesitated, because a new faint sense of pity and of compassion had come upon her.
'After all,' she thought, 'I should probably care such a little while, and she, poor child,--it is all her life!'