When you are seized they have orders to place you without trial in the lowest dungeon of the palace. I know it---no matter how. Oh, think how without you the sun goes from our life, how the people will lose their leader and liberty her priestess. Vera, you must not go!

VERA:

You are right: I will stay. I would live a little longer for freedom, a little longer for Russia.

ALEXIS:

When you die then Russia is smitten indeed, when you die then I shall lose all hope---all . . . Vera, this is fearful news you bring---martial law---it is too terrible. I knew it not, by my soul, I knew it not!

VERA:

How could you have known it? It is too well laid a plot for that. This great White Czar, whose hands are red with the blood of the people he has murdered, whose soul is black with this iniquity, is the cleverest conspirator of us all. Oh, how could Russia bear two hearts like yours and his!

ALEXIS:

Vera, the Emperor was not always like this. There was a time when he loved the people. It is that devil, whom God curse, Prince Paul Maraloffski, who has brought him to this. To-morrow, I swear it, I shall plead for the people to the Emperor.

VERA:

Plead to the Czar! Foolish boy, it is only those who are sentenced to death that ever see our Czar. Besides, what should he

care for a voice that pleads for mercy? The cry of a strong nation in its agony has not moved that heart of stone.

ALEXIS:

[(aside)]Yet shall I plead to him. They can but kill me.

PROFESSOR:

Here are the proclamations, Vera. Do you think they will do?

VERA:

I shall read them. How fair he looks! Methinks he never seemed so noble as to-night. Liberty is blessed in having such a lover.

ALEXIS:

Well, President, what are you deep in?

MICHAEL:

We are thinking of the best way of killing bears. [( Whispers to PRESIDENT and leads him aside.)]

PROFESSOR:

[(to VERA)] And the letters from our brothers at Paris and Berlin. What answer shall we send to them?

VERA:

[(takes them mechanically)]: Had I not strangled nature, sworn neither to love nor to be loved, methinks I might have loved him. Oh, I am a fool, a traitor myself, a traitor myself! But why did he come amongst us with his bright young face, his heart aflame for liberty, his pure white soul? Why does he make me feel at times as if I would have him as my king, Republican though I be? Oh, fool, fool, fool! False to your oath! Weak as water! Have done! Remember what you are---a Nihilist, a Nihilist!

PRESIDENT:

[(to MICHAEL)]: But you will be seized, Michael.

MICHAEL:

I think not. I will wear the uniform of the Imperial Guard, and the Colonel on duty is one of us. It is on the first floor, you remember; so I can take a long shot.

PRESIDENT:

Shall I not tell the brethren?

MICHAEL:

Not a word, not a word! There is a traitor amongst us.

VERA:

Come, are these the proclamations? Yes, they will do; yes, they will do. Send five hundred to Kiev and Odessa and Novgorod, five hundred to Warsaw, and have twice the number distributed among the Southern provinces, though these dull Russian peasants care little for our proclamations, and less for our martyrdoms. When the blow is struck, it must be from the town, not from the country.

MICHAEL:

Ay, and by the sword, not by the goose quill.