"We killed him to-night, Stefani, in your rooms. We threw out the food so he would have to seek something to eat. The last of that breed, stem and branch! We are no longer the mud; we ourselves are the heels. We are conquering the world. To-day Europe is ours; to-morrow, America!"
A wintry little smile stirred the lips of the man in the chair. America, with its keen perceptions of the ridiculous, its withering humour!
"No more the dissolute opera dancers will dance to your fiddling, Stefani, while we starve in the town. Fiddler, valet, tutor, the rivers and seas of Russia are red. We roll east and west, and our emblem is red. Stem and branch! We ground our heels in their faces as for centuries they ground theirs in ours. He escaped us there—but I was Nemesis. He died to-night."
The body in the chair relaxed a little. "He was clean and honest, Boris. I made him so. He would have done fine things if you had let him live."
"That breed?"
"Why, you yourself loved him when he was a boy!"
"Stem and branch! I loved my little sister Anna, too. But what did they do to her behind those marble walls? Did you fiddle for her? What was she when they let her go? My pretty little Anna! The fires of hell for those damned green stones of yours, Stefani! She heard of them and wanted to see them, and you promised."
